okay YouTube is about to be your favorite social media platform to create on as a content creator as a podcaster as a vlogger as an influencer as a business because after you watch this video you will look at other videos of people saying that YouTube is so hard to grow on in 2025 and you will deeply not relate because you have watched this video you have clocked into work today and you deeply understand every single thing you need to know about how to grow on YouTube in 2025 we have so much work to do i have never had so many notes in my life for a video because not only have I worked in marketing and social media for over 10 years I've worked with over 600 content creators so many content creators on their YouTube channel whether they had a million subscribers and they were stuck growing or they were brand new to YouTube and I'm going to unfiltered breakdown everything I did on YouTube everything you need to know we're going to get technical into the algorithm how to use chatbt to optimize everything i love chatbt for YouTube we're going to talk about mindset thumbnails scripting planning like literally everything you need to know and I'm so excited if you're new here welcome to Busy Blooming at the office of social media you've just clocked in to a peaceful side of social media and over here social media content creation it is that deep and especially on this video but as always use the comment section below as like a Slack unpacking group chat of anything else I didn't cover in this video if there's anything I missed or anything you have questions on use the comment section as an extension and I will be in the comments deep diving unpacking all things YouTube if there's anything else you want to know so I'm so excited with all that being said let's clock in let's deep dive in to how to actually grow on YouTube we're going to get the YouTube plaque after watching this video so I'm so excited and let's go to work together today before I get into the rest of the episode I have to tell you about one of the best ways to level up your content and I'm so excited to tell you that today's video is sponsored by Storyblocks you have heard me talk about them before i am so deeply obsessed with them i think I'm their number one fan storylocks is a stock media subscription service what is so cool about Story Blocks is that you don't have to pay for each video or each photo or animated background that you want to use you pay a subscription where you can have unlimited downloads as many videos photos sounds music whatever you want to use from Story Blocks it's unlimited under your subscription which is life-changing they have literally everything you need in one place whether you want to have an animated background to do some text on a sitdown YouTube video or if you want to make a short form video or a clip from your YouTube video on Instagram or Tik Tok you can use footage as B-roll as animated backgrounds to really level up your short form content and 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content creator so go check them out and let's get into the video okay so the first thing I need to do before we get in to anything else to do with YouTube is I need to address a certain group of people who have clocked in to work today who are with us at the office and those are the people that have either watched YouTube for a long time like 5 years 10 years and or people who have created on YouTube for a long time like 5 years plus i'm going to hold your hand while I say this it is going to be so much harder for you to grow on YouTube than everybody who is watching this video who is brand new to YouTube people who don't really watch YouTube or people who've never created a YouTube video before those people it's going to be so much easier than us people have watched and created for a long time because YouTube has changed so much since the days of even 2020 but especially the era of 2015 around then and as somebody who was viewed or created on YouTube for a long time we have these deepseated beliefs and understanding of how the platform works how we approach YouTube what we think a YouTube video and a YouTube channel should be and a lot of the content we have consumed in our life as a avid watcher a longtime watcher of YouTube is content that does not work right now for growth because YouTube has changed and evolved so much and YouTube literally invented being an influencer being a content creator like all the vlogs we see on Tik Tok on Instagram YouTube created vlogs youtube created influencers it's the longest standing social media platform it started get ready with me Q& A's all of it i want this video today this episode today to act as a deep deconstructing exercise of what works and what does not work on YouTube and I want you to forget everything you've ever thought even if you're a creator who has like 10,000 subscribers I want you to forget everything you've ever learned and everything you think works on YouTube because it is such a different platform speaking from experience that was the biggest mistake I made as a creator was treating YouTube like it was the same platform as it was in 2015 and start completely fresh so the first thing I want you to do is I want you to view YouTube not as a YouTube channel not as social media but more importantly than you have to do this with Tik Tok or Instagram i want you to objectively look at your YouTube channel as a business and as a collection there's one topic that infiltrates through every single video that you post and it is so important regardless of if you do vlogs sit downs you have a podcast you have all of different styles get ready with me on your channel there's always one theme that infiltrates through every single video that you have because I think one of the best ways to grow on YouTube in 2025 is to have a channel that is bingeable at any time of the year that somebody comes to your channel and it's so clear to them like what they would get from my channel like if they're at an event if someone's at an event in Toronto and they're like "Okay I just found this person on YouTube they will help you with this or they talk about this." Like you have such a clear theme and topic with all of your videos regardless of the style and what you have to do here as well when you approach YouTube is you really have to make a decision to stop prioritizing what you like and what you feel like doing and what I mean by that is you're not going to hate the videos that you make but I feel like on YouTube it was the hardest platform for me out of my TikTok my Instagram to really break up with the idea that when I have my podcast or when I have my sitdown or when I do vlogs or whatever it is it's not just me like going for the vibes of doing whatever I feel like i used to sit down and like plan out my week my content for the week and I'd be like day in my life is my Monday video thursday I'll do like a Q&A then maybe the next week I'll do a week in my life like those are not content strategies those are not video ideas that actually is like a 10year-old plus strategy in 2025 what you do instead if you want to do vlogs or more lifestyle content is you would have a theme like the theme for the week I would pick would be work life balance or something and then I have a vlog style video where I'm talking about that theme throughout the video while also showing my life but there's a greater theme and a greater purpose that's outward focused to my vlog it's not the vlog you view vlogs as a vlog style execution and that's another thing I wanted to say as well is over here busy blooming in the school of thought of YouTube vlogs are not a type of video it's not a video for the day it's not the topic for the week is a vlog or day in my life or week in my life we're viewing vlogs as a style of execution same with sitdown videos but you always have a theme so let's just I'm getting ahead of myself let's get into it okay so let's get into my step-by-step method you guys know me i love a step-by-step method and I wanted to take you through my process that I would advise you to do on if you're somebody who's like "Okay I want to get that YouTube plaque i've never posted on YouTube or I have posted on YouTube and I haven't really grown a lot." Like this is what we're going to do to get you that YouTube plaque also by the way they made the YouTube plaque smaller did anybody else notice that there were so many creators growing on YouTube just from shorts and different things that the plaque is like half the size like you could carry it around like you could put it in your purse what's in my purse my YouTube plaque anyways I just thought like no one's talking about that enough but if that's on a sign that it's not too late to grow on YouTube I don't know what is there's so many people growing hitting 100K they had to make the plaque smaller okay so let's go through step by step the weekly method to growing like how to approach YouTube how to plan how to optimize everything so the first thing I want you to do every single week is assume that you have this clear theme you know what you want to be known for you have a clear idea of okay this channel if somebody comes to my YouTube channel they can binge all my videos and I know what they'd be learning or feeling like I have a clear mission of what I want to do so the first thing you're going to do is you are going to step one every single week pick a theme for your video so this is a topic a theme that aligns with the overall brand of this channel of your channel so like obviously busy blooming social media content creation building your vision like that's what we do over here entrepreneurship so every single week I think okay what is I don't think about vlog style I don't think about anything yet i'm thinking okay what is like the topic the theme of the week so for example this week the topic is YouTube a guide on YouTube the topic could be confidence growing on social media or feeling cringe growing on social media but also really take a step back and think about more importantly what does my audience want to see if you don't have an audience yet think about the audience you want what do those people want to see right now what are they going through right now is it a new year is it the fall did something really big happen in the community of people that you're talking about like obviously with the Tik Tok ban for example we have been covering that so take a step back and think what are the people in my community like what are they feeling what are they going through and what do I also feel like talking about because that's important and again the topic is not day in my life and week in my life because that is an execution style vlog style a vlog is not the topic there needs to be in 2025 a bigger purpose a bigger theme a bigger topic of the video and you can vlog but there has to be something going through your vlog that you're talking about some value in there that's not just like week of my life Unless you have a big following on another social media platform and this is not to say you can never do that this is to say right now in a period of growth that's not what I would personally recommend then what we're going to do is build out the framework of your video and this is so important this is something I would never do i just got on the camera and like have vibes for the week a couple notes i am so strategic and we're going to break the fourth wall a little bit today of like exactly how I planned this video and every video on this channel so what you're going to do to build out your framework is open up a fresh document like Google Docs Notion i use ClickUp right now and at the top of your document you're going to build out this little questionnaire i just write these questions out literally in every single video you have seen of mine I have these questions at the top so question number one is for this week's video who are you talking to and what are they going through this is so important because there are so many ways that you can approach a topic for example if I wanted to do a video on YouTube I could talk to people who are wanted to start a podcast on YouTube or I could specifically talk to vloggers or I could talk to people who have never posted a YouTube video before so on my little document over here I really wanted to talk to people today a few different groups of people who have watched and created for a long time and are stuck for people have never started for people who really feel like overwhelmed by YouTube and like stuck and confused about YouTube so take a second and write out some of the things they're thinking they're feeling they're going through and who that video is really for all of this is going to help shape your video so gorgeously then what you're going to write out is what are the main takeaways from the video like when someone clicks on it watches it finishes it like what are the main things they took away the main learnings the main feelings points lessons like anything like that write those out as well like just super high level like the main like five things even less that you want people to take away for example one of mine today is I want you to feel not overwhelmed like I want you to actually feel like so equipped and like deeply understanding how YouTube works then what you're going to write out is what is the best way I can execute this so this is your execution style so think about do you want to do a vlog style because maybe another goal of yours is you do want to show a little bit of your lifestyle and like you want to show behind the scenes and things that's great so maybe you do want to do vlog style maybe you want to do a sit down video maybe you want to do a get ready with me you want to do like a cozy sit down with a microphone maybe you want to have more of a polished sit down with like B-roll and things like that so what's the execution style for the topic and the takeaways of this week and then the last question you're going to ask yourself this is so important i feel like so many people skip over this is this video for people who have already followed you and subscribed to you or is this for people who have never seen you before or is it for both i really feel like having the mindset shift of okay if I want to go through a period of growth I'm going to pick topics and treat my videos in a way and structure them in a way that is so outward focused for fresh people every single time i feel like it's such a good way to think about growth because if your goal is to grow and reach people who have never followed you you're not going to make the title in the thumbnail like so casual because you're assuming people don't know you i feel like that's another mistake people make is we try to emulate and like not copy but kind of mimic what creators who have been on the platforms for years and years do or creators who have brought their audience over their huge audiences over from Tik Tok and Instagram to YouTube is they have just like casual thumbnails and titles of like day in my life with like a screenshot look at Emma Chamberlain's titles and thumbnails and so we do that thinking like okay well that works for them but that works for them because they have an existing audience it's not the way to grow so that's the first thing you're going to do when outlining your video so now moving down into the next phase of outlining your video is you're going to decide what your thumbnail and your title text is going to be so the text on the thumbnail and the text on the title you should do this in my opinion it helps so much if you do this before you film the video and we're going to talk about thumbnails and titles in a second so that's where you're going to do step number one every single week in a blank document is create that framework of your video so when you sit down to actually like script it and film it you have such a good base foundation of okay this is who the video is for this is what I'm doing i'm adding it to this collection the key takeaways I know exactly how it's going to be packaged you could change the title and thumbnail but you just have like a good framework and understanding of what you're doing then you're going to do in the framework of the video is you're actually going to outline and script the video if you're listening on Spotify or Apple I did script in air quotes because I don't actually like word for word script my videos but what you're going to do now is outline what you want to say so I do this in a couple of different ways and everyone's a little bit different so option one if I am trying to do like a big video like a threemonth content strategy for example I usually every quarter not this quarter we skipped it cuz we did a challenge instead but usually every quarter I do a threemonth content strategy those videos take me a lot of time to plan cuz I'm so intentional and sometimes I can be a little much a little extra but I really want to plan out a good strategy with content pillars a theme an era content ideas everything for you to follow for a whole quarter and I do it as well it's the same strategy I follow so for that video if it's more like of a robust topic you want to talk about I take pieces of paper like printer paper or like rip pages on my notebook and I write out like on my kitchen island all the different topics that I want to talk about like the big key takeaways that we wrote out in the outline i write out all of those or I could draw it on my iPad or draw it on a piece of paper like a mind map of all the different topics and points I really want to make in the video so that's one way to kind of like brain dump mind map all the key points the key takeaways all your thoughts on the topic that week or you can just do this on a document either just brain dump under each key takeaway like all your advice your tips what you want to say your thoughts like if it's outfits or fashion or meals like all of that or you can use like a talk to text in a document and just like talk like brain dump like okay here's all the things I want to talk about but basically you want to take your key takeaways and just have a messy brain dump under them of all the points you want to make and get across i recommend when you're planning out a YouTube video not doing it like the morning of because you want to do it a couple days before so when you're going throughout your week your work week other things like thoughts might come up that you think of that you can go back and add to it but you want to have this like messy mind dump of thoughts and notes under the key takeaways then what you're going to do is you are going to take for the first time in this video our favorite co-orker over here Chad GBT employee of the month always you're going to take that mess either take pictures of it on your phone put it into Chad GBT or take all of your messy notes copy and paste it into chat GPT and say can you organize this in a really nice organized way under all the key takeaways for this video you're not asking Chachi to add anything to it you could use chatbt if you're doing a lot of research and you're like "Okay can you back up this one thing I'm saying if you're talking a lot about protein or like something healthwise you could ask it to pull a report from you or if you want a specific quote from somebody you could say "Okay could you find a Mel Robbins quote that aligns with this?" But for the most part I personally don't use Chad GBT for like content adding anything cuz it's just it's not as good as like a human as much as we love her like it's just never going to be as original from your unique like thoughts and experiences but it's such a good tool to use to organize all the key buckets and key things that it recognizes are like the best ways to categorize your video so then what we have here is this amazing document with your foundation at the top you have your outline organized of all the bullet points you want to say then what you're going to do and this is what I do is you're going to outline the execution so let's do each style so say you want to do a vlog style video i've only done a handful of vlogs over here i want to do more i love vlogging you guys know that i just love it so much but let's say you want to do a vlog that week that's the style you want to do you want to show a little bit of your lifestyle too so what you're going to do is you're going to write out in a separate section of this document all of the parts of the week you want to show or the day you want to show once you have a good understanding of okay I want to show like a get ready with me my outfit going to work i'm going to really want to show the behind the scenes of this one thing what you're going to do is you're going to line up those key takeaways those key messages you want to get across to certain parts of your week you're like "Okay when I'm getting ready on Tuesday I want to talk about this one confidence thing and when I'm making my dinner on Thursday I want to talk about this one thing." So what you're doing is you're showing the week in your life but you're infiltrating this theme so then when you package your video you're not going to package it as week of my life because again we're better than that over here busy blooming you're going to package it as trying to rebrand my confidence this week or something better than that but you know what I mean like you're packaging your video title thumbnail the whole video as a bigger theme and then you're also in addition to that showing your week so that's a really good way to use vlog style videos and attach it to a bigger theme and have more value it's more sharable people will watch all of your vlogs because there's all this good advice and tips and value and outfits and recipes and different things depending on what your theme is and then if you want to do a sit down video I primarily do a sit down video so what I do is I try to think about okay what are the segments I want in my video i try to actually picture like the timestamps and everything maybe you're somebody who wants title cards between which we'll talk about branding in a second i have this organized list of stuff I want to say so how could I organize this in the best way for somebody like I almost always do a step-by-step processes i just in the nature of talking about social media i like that but maybe you don't want to do a stepbystep on the topic maybe you want to have a list of 10 ways or 10 mistakes or maybe you want to have like different parts to the video or maybe you just have like a list of topics you just want to have different segments throughout the video for different topics but organize the content in the way that you want it to play out for the video you could sit down and script word by word your videos i am a talker i love to talk and I do talk very fast which is my number one comment i know that there's a 75 speed feature if you want to use that i had somebody recently comment that they watch these videos in 2x speed which is so crazy to me but I do actually have I find for me as a creator a hard time making it concise i'm very long- winded is something I work on and have really worked on is making my videos like more concise and less long chatty but if you're somebody who really struggles with like thinking of what to say you totally could sit down and script out like word for word sentence by sentence what you want to say and kind of have it in front of you and read it i have sentences scripted out and I have bolded sections so like right now we're in the how to outline the video section and then I have a list of sentences underneath that I just wrote out and then throughout all my notes I have certain things bolded and highlighted so you have to do some practice and figure out for yourself like what is the best way to go about organizing it for you do you need a script do you need bullets are you better when there's like not a lot of bullet points so you're more creative i find for me somewhere in the middle is great and then the last thing you're going to do in this first step of creating your framework of the video is you're going to structure your intro the beginning of the video is so important this is something I never used to value very much like you'd click on the video like I said I'd say like random things welcome to the podcast like whatever or when I did a vlog I'd have this like super long intro um a bunch of stuff from the week that made no sense compared to the title and the thumbnail so you really want to think about the intro so this is how I would structure it is I would first really be intentional about the first thing you say because again click-through rate and retention which we'll talk about more but the best way to get retention is when you open up the video and what you say matches the title in the thumbnail not word for word but it is something that is the similar tone and theme and topic of the thumbnail and the title so for example the first thing I said in this video if I scroll up to my intro section of my document I said "YouTube is about to be your new favorite social media platform." That's all I have written and then I kind of went off of that i don't remember what I said in the beginning but it is so important to have something really great at the beginning and then after you have the first sentence kind of mapped out that's pretty much the only thing I scrub word for word is the first sentence and sometimes it changes when I'm filming i'll think of something better after but I have a good first intro line and then I map out what I'm going to say in the video so I will say the first line like you're gonna love YouTube and then the second line is today we're going to talk about this this and this or by the end of this video you're going to feel this way like something that's kind of an agenda for your video if you're doing a vlog you could either have a really quick intro of like a preview when you're talking about like certain pieces of advice or tips or whatever that you're giving the lines or you could literally start the vlog and be like "Welcome to a new week." You could film this at the end of the week being like "This week you're about to watch was crazy we talked so much about confidence i gave you advice on this like whatever having a good intro line that matches and then an outline of what you're going to talk about and then another tip is to add in like a sentence but say a little bit of something of why someone should care about you and what you have to say i like to give that because if I'm talking to somebody who has no idea who I am I really want them to know that I have a unique angle and like my why of like why me like why something about me is interesting that they should listen to okay so that is the first step of our robust intentional strategic outline and framework of every single video this will make your filming process your thumbnail title process everything so much easier putting in the work into every video is so important it changes everything it will help with literally everything growth with you as a creator before we get into like the technical part of YouTube of uploading all of that I wanted to quickly touch on branding as a creator because you guys know me branding is so important to me so when it comes to YouTube it's so important to know that you already know what you're going to say you have the topic you have your theme you know the main overall topics that you're doing you know what you're going to say but how you say it is so important so take a second and think about a very simple brand strategy and a way to think about this in the theme of like work and being at Visibling office is hard skills and soft skills hard elements to your brand and soft elements to your brand so what do you want visually the hard elements to be so this is editing text in your videos where you're sitting do you want like a lot of editing a lot of graphics a lot of overlays do you want like for example sitdown videos i could do B-roll i don't but I definitely could a lot of creators do B-roll this is more of a podcast setup do you want to always be sitting in like different sections of a studio or like different sections of an apartment do you want to be looking like really professional or really cozy do you always want to be wearing like a certain color i try to always wear like the busy blooming blue as much as I can so what are some like hard skills or like technical visual things you want in your branding i would pick a few i've actually as of today just really been finalizing rolling out a rebrand at Busy Blooming or not a rebrand but like an elevation which we're going to talk about more in the after hours today my old branding elements were like big Helvetica or Aerial depending on the video text that would be like behind my head i was always sitting in my apartment i really like to have a 4K camera i'm going to say though like in terms of equipment you don't need a 4K camera so many people I know use their iPhone and iPhones are like great for filming videos so that was my like hard skills my like branding visual elements very very simple in my opinion i've tested a bunch of stuff of having like title cards and transitions and different things i have found at the end of the day I like when it's simple that's just because for me as a viewer I put my content on a TV and like have it playing in the background so like the ROI of my time sometimes I'll put little office things in which I do like doing that but those are my visual branding elements so think about a few things you want it to be and then think about the soft skills like the more emotional part of your brand for me an example of this is I really like my videos to be really fun and like really light i really showcase my personality i feel like this is something if you go back and watch my older videos I would try to tone down a little bit to be a little more like for everybody i feel like I'm definitely not for everyone the way I talk my personality like things like that but I feel like as time has gone on and the more comfortable you get on camera the almost like the harder it is to tone yourself down so I really am intentional about making sure when I film a video I have good energy i would rather post a video a few days late than post something where I'm like exhausted busy Blooming feels a certain way there's a feeling that you get when you watch our content or whatever you do at Bus Busy Blooming but I want it to feel like a certain way that's so important to me also another element for example that you could think of is I always want to talk about mindset and like deeper emotional parts of growing what you want to grow in social media that's so important to me we have like little inside jokes over here that like chatb like things like that that I love so try to take a step back think about a few it's really important to just pick a few things so you don't get too overwhelmed but pick like three or four elements that you want to be like either visual branding things emotional branding things that you have throughout every single video okay now we're going to talk about is something I am so excited to talk about because I feel so deeply passionate about the YouTube technical side the platform of YouTube they have so many elements that go into every single video it honestly takes my breath away at Busy Looming the amount of PDFs and videos and conversations with Chad GPT we have done to analyze all of the technical parts of YouTube that I'm going to condense down today into like a peaceful list for you because I have deep dove into it i used to be in the mindset of like okay you have to post your YouTube video at the same time every single week and if you skip a week it's not going to be good for the algorithm like the algorithm and the reason certain videos do better than others is so different than it used to be okay so we're going to break it down i'm going to tell you my best piece of advice that has changed my life we're going to talk about titles and thumbnails too because that is like the most important thing in addition to everything else we've said so the first I want to talk about is the YouTube algorithm super simple the YouTube algorithm favors click-through rate and retention so click-through rate is the percentage of people that click on your video when they see it at the homepage or in their subscriptions feed the main change I find in YouTube is that YouTube used to be so like SEO search focused and you probably I would fall into this habit so much of like when I post a week of my life I'd be like Toronto 9 to5 week of my life productive like because that's how it used to be which might sound weird of a title but that used to hit back in like 2020 because people would be searching a lot like week of my life 9 to5 like a lot of people on YouTube would find the content they want to see through search that is not how it works Now people find creators and the content they want to watch on their home feed youtube just like Tik Tok just like Instagram works on a predictionsbased algorithm if they try to predict on your home feed what you're going to like so why this changes everything for creators is that this means that your title and thumbnail doesn't have to be only searchable but clickable and how is something clickable if it's super bold and it catches your attention so how do you do that let's talk about it because click-through rate how to get a good click-through rate is to have a good title and thumbnail and then we'll talk about retention so title and thumbnails my goodness the journey I have been on with titles and thumbnails so let's talk about titles so what I found and I said this last week actually as well and you know what was so funny is I recently was on the Kenzie Elizabeth's house guest podcast and someone in the comment section said "This title reminds me of a busy blooming title." And that meant you have no idea how much that meant to me because I try so carefully and intentionally to have the busy blooming titles be consistent like have the same tone the same voice in the titles and what I find works and I have tested everything you guys like literally everything on YouTube titles and thumbnails is what works really well for in my opinion is one sentence that is sentence case like not title case and is outward focus or really really bold or both ideally that is what works the best bonus points if you can also have it searchable so I'm going to give an example i'm going to pull up my most viewed video on YouTube and I want to break this down because this is the first time I ever tried this i rolled out this strategy literally in May of 2024 and then this it like changed everything so my most viewed video in the last year has 440,000 views and this formula has worked for all of my most viewed videos the video is about how to become a content creator i gave kind of my step-by-step process of from zero how I would start and so 5 years ago I would have said the ultimate guide to becoming a content creator or how actually I probably would have said how to become a content creator in 2024 cuz I posted this last year and then I would have said like how to grow on Tik Tok something like I would have made it so searchable of like how to x y and z because that's people search but what I did is the title is you're going to be a full-time content creator in 3 months and here's how having an outward focused sense of you're going to do this or if you are feeling this way you need to watch this another example of my title what you're going to post every week when you're busy to grow on social media your 9 toive job in 2025 is going to be content creation do you see the theme of these titles i'm not saying you have to like do the same titles but I'm going to actually bring up another creator Jenna Hong i am so obsessed with her she is a 9 to-5 vlogger and so this is one of her most recent titles instead of saying 9 toive working in my life the title is "Can we actually have a good Monday today come work with my 9 to5 corporate job with me." Another title she has instead of 9 to5 vlog is okay am I crashing out being behind and mindset for my 2025 goals it's the similar it's a different structure but it's the same idea of it's bold it's outward focus it's casual and breaking up with this mindset of making everything so like keyword stuff and focus i see this all the time i think it is the biggest mistake creators make is they make their titles like day in my life productive like no one knows you i mean some people do but there's no bigger theme because what you're actually doing with that title is you're talking about the execution style of your video like what is the video actually about something else that works so great in titles is numbers and transformation so you're going to be a full-time content creator in 3 months or I'm going to change your mindset about cringe or you're never going to feel cringe posting on social media in the next 10 minutes i've seen titles like give me 10 minutes and I'll change your mindset on this timebound titles work really well mr beast has such good advice on YouTube but you know his target audience is a little different than mine but Mr beast is like an actual genius i'm so scared of him he talks a lot about numbers and titles are so good keeping it one bold outward focused sentence about the topic of the video and not just the topic but the transformation of the video of what they're going to the transformation they're going to go through when they watch the video is so key something else that really works which is actually I learned this from Mr beast is that when you update your title and when you update your thumbnail let's say a week after you post your video YouTube will retest your video so they will see like okay she updated her thumbnail she updated her title for 24 to 48 hours let me retest that video and see if it gets more clicks if it gets more clicks and the clickthrough rate goes up it will continue to get pushed out and so that's why on YouTube I have had videos in the past where they did not perform so a couple months later I'm like "Okay I'm going to try and update the thumbnail and the title." And it blew up like months later it actually does work very very soon you guys like I can touch it it's so soon we are launching something at Busy Blooming where you can like get feedback we can unpack and I will you can drop in our titles and thumbnails and we will unpack i'm so excited i have never worked in silence so much for so many months in my life on something but very soon we'll be able to unpack so just like give me a couple weeks for that and then let's talk about thumbnails so thumbnails is something else i have actually been told by people at Busy Blooming that I have thumbnail blindness which there's no cure for but that's okay i feel like thumbnails is something that I am stuck in 2015 with and so I actually luckily learned in the last year that YouTube does an ABC testing feature where you can upload with every single video if you're on your computer three different thumbnails and ABC testing is when YouTube will take it for 2 weeks and see which thumbnail gets the most clicks and what I would recommend doing with thumbnails is because thumbnails it's something that it's like it takes so much creative knowing like what looks good and how to design it all of the thumbnails you see on our channel over here I've made in Canva some people love them some people hate them but what I've learned with thumbnails is firstly it doesn't matter if you like it it just matters if it works one of the biggest mistakes I made was try to make everything so aesthetic and on brand to the busy blooming brand like an example like I already gave I could use the blue and the Times New Roman condensed font that I use but Helvetica big or Aerial big font it just works better on YouTube it's easier to read i tried to use the blue last a couple weeks ago in the thumbnail i shouldn't have done that but what I would recommend doing is take a look around of what people who are talking about similar topics to you are doing and like the best highest performing creators what their thumbnails look like because every area of YouTube has different styles of thumbnails like Mr beast thumbnails if I posted a thumbnail that looked like that I feel like people would like be so confused honestly you might click on it because you'd be like "Is she okay?" But then if you look at like the wellness glow up side of YouTube it's such a different style than that so take a gander on YouTube and see what other people in similar areas that you talk about do and test like test and test and test do not try to find a formula youtube is ever changing and I feel like as a creator the second you try to find a formula with anything you're not evolving like you're not letting yourself evolve you're literally looking to stop evolving you're searching for that when you're trying to find a formula so every week take it week by week and test out three completely different styles one that has a lot of Pinterest or a lot of icons a lot of text one that's really minimal one that's kind of in the middle and see what gets the most clicks see the thumbnail test run through at least for a week and then whatever one wins make three more iterations of that to really keep testing and seeing what your audience likes it is so easy to fall into the trap of like okay but I just want to like be minimal i want to be like Jason Marie and have like one single thing but Jason Marie has 100,000 people that watch every single video she posts and if you want to go through a period of growth I would really recommend and sometimes I do have to say like in the like think of um Wizard Liz I think her name is she does one thumbnail like and that has always worked for her so it really just depends on the area like the self-improvement area you're in because really really simple thumbnails do work for a lot of certain themes and topics and sides of social media like especially like when you're talking about a certain topic of like glow up or advice or like giving up social media i do find that simple thumbnails work so well so test one out like test one screenshot thumbnail out because it might work for you but then test out another one cuz you can upload three with every video which is so fun when it comes to thumbnail text and the title I always try to have similar text but never you want to never repeat what is in the title in the thumbnail make the thumbnail really bold like I usually do a full sentence in the thumbnail cuz that just works well for me or do a transformation of like 5 hours a week to 100k followers or having something even like a quote of something you said in quotations or like a quote like graphic of something you're saying but we can talk more about thumbnails so soon and titles so soon in something I'm launching or in the comments for now below but let's just end the video and quickly talk about how to optimize your video with chat GBT and how to go about all the technical stuff because there's a lot of technical that goes into YouTube there's the description the hashtags the keywords like everything so let's take it step by step so my biggest piece of life-changing advice truly for YouTube is getting an RTF file of your video so once you film your video edit your video also if you want any information on like my filming editing I have that in a vlog that I will link down below and I will link my equipment down below but let's say you have your video done like it's filmed it's edited take that video and make an RTF file which is text it's like rich text file which is basically just a transcript of your final video having the transcript of your final video is like having gold it will change your life and I'm going to tell you why once you have that file the transcript the text I use dscript for this i can link dcript down below you can ask Chachi PT literally anything and so we're going to go step by step what I would do so step number one go in descript i'll link Dcript down below and then you're going to ask Chad PT to give you everything you need to optimize your video so in the description box you're going to ask Chad PT based on this RTF file of my new new YouTube video who is for this target audience please write me a description that has a lot of keywords and good SEO the description also like the first thing in your description box like the description of the video the first sentence should be like a hook of some sort so get chatbt to write that for you and also a good thing it can do is give you some like bullet points so like your top of your description box in your YouTube video has like a little paragraph of what it's about and then some bullet points of what it's about a good tip also for the description box get chatbt to write out like who the video is for like this video is for you if you're struggling with X Y and Z then we're going to do is you can also do this in dscript but use chat gbt to ask it for timestamps you guys don't sit and manually watch your video and do time stamps chad GBT can do that for you which is life-changing in 2025 your video has to have timestamps it is essential it is literally make or break for retention you have to have to do it at Busy Blooming you have to do it it's on your work to-do list it's a mandatory skill sometimes you go to a YouTube video and they don't have time stamps i'm like well I don't know what you're even going to say so I'm going to click out like it's another agenda of what you're going to talk about and people can decide if they want to keep watching timestamps also come up in search like if someone's searching for something the timestamps make them SEO friendly of like how to optimize the algorithm chatbt would be this time stamp so when people are searching it your time stamp comes up for them in search so your description box or the description that CHPT wrote you the timestamps and the first time stamp has to be 000000 intro or whatever but if you have to have that 000000 to start your timestamps to populate them in the video then you're going to ask chatbt to give you some hashtags i do about 10 you can just throw those in the bottom of the description box and then you can ask chat GPT is there anything you said that you would link or anything you said that you would mention in the description box like literally the best way to use it so that's everything that goes in your description box you can also just look in this video if you can go to YouTube if you're listening on Spotify and see you can even copy and paste as a template of like exactly what we do but Chhatbt can make all of that for you in like 2 minutes and then what you're going to do is ask ChatBT to give you tags so this is in the tag section of the video up to 500 characters copy and paste format you could just copy and paste the ones he says to use and paste them into your YouTube you can ask chat GBT what categories your video should be in like people in blogs or education and then one of the best ways to go about testing and analytics and optimizing is to use Chad GBT as your little YouTube expert and take what he says with a grain of salt because he doesn't know everything but what I would really recommend doing is going into your YouTube analytics going to the advanced and downloading a CSV file of all of your analytics in the last year or so on your YouTube channel put them into chatbt and say "Hey you're a YouTube expert could you please analyze why you think certain videos are working and aren't working so you can get a really good understanding of why your videos are working and not working?" And this mindset of really treating your YouTube channel objectively as a business of every product launch or every video you do really looking into why is it working why is it not working could I update the thumbnail could I update the title is it not bold enough does it sound like Chad GBT i wouldn't recommend using chat chip for your titles and thumbnails make them like really human and really casual but not just relying on what you like aesthetically or the vibe that you like or like what you think makes sense like really thinking objectively of the user behavior of your video of people watching your video going to your channel does it make sense does it match is it cohesive you can also use chat GPT to make carousels of your videos like now that it has a script like "Hey can you make like a notes app style carousel from everything I send this video?" You could also ask it like what point of the video do you think I should clip so that in my opinion is like the best way to optimize your YouTube is to put your RTF file the transcript of a video into Chad GBT and use Chat GBT to optimize it for YouTube you also can do little things like the video file on your computer that you upload you can make the file name like a searchable thing i've heard that works i don't I don't know if that actually does anything but I think that is everything I wanted to say in terms of growing on YouTube this episode has been so much fun to film we still have after hours after work after this meeting has concluded i have more I want to say a little bit more i wanted to talk about some other things as well but if you have anything else that you wanted me to cover in terms of YouTube if you have more questions comment them down below but this was so much fun i had such a blast filming this and thank you for coming to work with me together today i hope you're feeling equipped excited peaceful about YouTube and this was so much fun so thank you for listening and with all that being said let's get into after hours at busy blooming after work let's get into it okay welcome to after hours it is the after hours after work social work is done for the day but I'm sitting on the floor and my microphone i also got my hair chopped off right after I filmed that episode so here's the new the new hair you guys know if you watch the vlogs I have been on a journey with my hair and it was time to just give up and cut it anyways welcome to the new segments of the Busy Blooming podcast today is a big day at the podcast a big day at the busy blooming office because I'm rolling out a new show in a way like a new style a new format of content I have been testing so many things this year every episode that you have watched mainly for the viewers on YouTube if you're listening everything's kind of in the same but if you've been watching on YouTube or you watch a Spotify video I've been testing out so many things over at Busy Blooming of like different styles of content vlog style sitting at different parts in the apartment trying different segments coffee chats and after hours and a million things because going into 2025 I really wanted a different strategy like I talked about in the episode today at work today we talked about how last year it was kind of the first year for me on YouTube specifically i've had the podcast for a while but I've never really had it on YouTube in this big of a way and I had kind of a formula like sitting on my chair with big text and going into 2025 I wanted a different feel i wanted to kind of take us to the next level of last year the whole year was like growth reaching new people and going into 2025 I really wanted it to feel like an office like a close-knit like we all go to work together today we all get it we have like inside jokes like over at Busy Blooming and I was trying to think about a creative way to do the show and so what I have learned so far the first quarter of 2021 or 2025 I told myself I'm going to take the whole first quarter and every single week try something new with the show and get your feedback read the comments and this is what I figured out after the first quarter of what you want to see is that there's really two big things which is the first part of the show the 75 80% of the show every single week will be a meeting we clock in work we get our notebooks out we get our iPads out we have a meeting about something about social media content creation building your vision everything we always talk about and then after we do that I wanted to add on an additional part every single week every single episode called afterwork social it's kind of like being up at drinks with your friends after work it's more casual it's more fun and we dive into things that a lot of the things that maybe we talked about like this week I want to talk about a couple youtuby things but also you guys know me i love so much i'm so deeply obsessed my whole life is all about navigating our mindset and mental health and self-development so also in the afterwork socials I wanted to share with you anything that I've learned in terms of like the deeper emotional side of all of this and that is such a big value of mine is feeling mentally emotionally happy and like every day you feel really great and then of course unpack any behind the scenes any updates of busy blooming things I'm learning as a creator things people I'm working with are learning and I'm just so excited a little afterwork social so those are the two segments of the show we clock in we have our meeting that's usually like 45 minutes or longer and then we have a little mini afterwork social every single week and I'm so excited we will be getting back on the Monday schedule where every Monday we'll launch but throughout like the spring summer we are launching something so big busy blooming this is something that I have been working in silence on since November of 2024 it is the reason I paused all my coaching i don't coach anymore which I have not said anything about this but I am launching a digital office for the world of social media where every single day we could clock in together and everything you need to know about social media comes across your desk you'll be the first to know but also you can get content feedback throw in your real throw in your caption get feedback on your videos directly from me you'll also network with other content creators get content ideas like truly it is an office that we I at least will be in every single day and I'm so excited the reason I want to tell you about it this week because we aren't launching it for a few weeks but I actually want a few of you to join early and give you early access so if that is something you're interested in please go visit busybloon.ca you can sign up you'll get early access unpack all the trends the updates content calendars like really be your office busy Blooming is taking the office to the next level as an actual office and so many more details will roll out but this is the first and only place I'm talking about this right now because if you are somebody who is watching this I know you are somebody who will really benefit and like love Busy Living HQ and I know that we're just going to have so much fun at work every single day it's launching in a few weeks this is the only place I'm going to say this for a while but if you want to join early go to busybloom.ca submit the form and I will send you an email i'll link it down below and that is what I have really really been working on all year is putting this together the marketing for it is going to be so fun so just get ready on our Instagram and my Instagram and Tik Tok for what that's going to look like but you guys will have an inside scoop everyone's going to be like "What is Busy Blooming HQ?" And you'll be like "I listen to the podcast i know exactly what that is." But with the launch of Busy Blooming HQ and this digital office that I've been planning to do for so long I really wanted to bring along the podcast with the brand and so I love how everything is just really coming to life of how I wanted our 2025 content strategy and business plan to go and it's so fun you guys i have been out of corporate since 2021 you guys might know this i quit my nineto-ive job in 2021 and then for all of 2022 I worked at two part-time marketing jobs at a beauty brand at a tech company i did consulting while building up all these other things on the side and so I have been out of corporate for so long and now we have our own corporate office we're really taking social media seriously to the next level so more to come on that i'm so excited to continue to unpack but just if you want to join early I'll link it down below i also wanted to provide speaking of YouTube a correction from last week's video it was actually retracted the article I read and I was actually reading an article not watching a Tik Tok and the article was saying that when you want to get monetized on YouTube you need to have 4,000 watch hours on YouTube and YouTube shorts contributed to that 4,000 watch hours i recently read that that is not actually true and that wasn't true like the person who wrote that it was retracted so I wanted to retract down the podcast that that's actually not true like it's only long form content that contributes to the 4,000 watch hours that you need as a content creator to become monetized on YouTube but I will leave us there today there are so many things I want to tell you about like mindset things and work life balance and all of that that we will talk about in the continuing after hours part of the show there's so many behind the scenes things I want to show you but for today I will keep it concise and this wasn't even concise but you know concise for me thanks for coming to the office of busy blooming i had so much fun talking about YouTube but if you have any questions of course comment them down below use the below as like a group chat unpacking anything else you want to cover and thank you again to Story Blocks for sponsoring today's video go check them out i will link them down below and I hope you have a gorgeous rest of your week and I will see you next week while we're clocking to work okay bye [Music]