Webinar Recap: Loyalty and Revenue in the YouTube Universe
July 8 (Replay at end of page)
On July 8, The Advisory Board for the Arts hosted our 15th webinar since the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. With arts organizations increasingly focused on ramping up their digital capabilities, we decided to focus this session on learning from successful digital content creators. We were privileged to host Emily Graslie, Chief Curiosity Correspondent at the Field Museum in Chicago and Founder and host of The Brain Scoop YouTube channel and Prehistoric Road Trip on PBS, Sam Denby, Founder and host of the Wendover Productions and Half as Interesting YouTube channels, and Dave Wiskus, Founder and CEO of Standard, a community of digital content creators, who also just launched the subscription-based streaming platform Nebula. Our panelists shared their experience in building popular YouTube channels, specifically focusing on their strategies for building an audience, creating quality content, and measuring success.
Building an Audience
We started our conversation off with a simple question – why YouTube? The response among our panelists was unanimous: there is no better audience expansion platform. While Facebook and Twitter serve as great platforms to engage audiences, YouTube is known for being a discovery platform – a place for new audiences to find you. Most views on YouTube do not come from audience members already subscribed to the channel, but from discovery mechanisms on the platform, such as the home page, browse pages, and recommended videos.
Emily shared that when the Field Museum brought her (and her YouTube channel) on, there was a big question about how they would use the property moving forward. While initially the museum wanted to understand the relationship between viewership and on site museum attendance, they quickly realized by looking at the demographics watching the channel that they were reaching an entirely new audience they had never before considered – people who may never physically enter the museum building. Brain Scoop enables the museum to further its mission by engaging with viewers all over the world.
Dave Wiskus emphasized the importance of finding a niche on YouTube and serving them well. For example, when Sam Denby’s plane videos started doing well on the Wendover Productions YouTube channel, he shifted focus to produce more content around that theme. Finding your niche and tailoring your content to their interests helps expand your reach, as the YouTube algorithm then finds more people who will enjoy similar content. Sam echoed these ideas highlighting that a significant benefit of these platforms is that you do not have to put an enormous amount of effort into marketing given the sites have their own audience expansion tools. The real focus is on making content that will engage your audiences.
Creating Quality Content
When we asked our panel about how they think about the content they put out, Emily emphasized the importance of asking “will this content resonate with our audience?”. She considers that the guiding light to identifying topics that are timely and relevant and reflective of the organization’s broader mission. She acknowledged that the nuts and bolts of the production must be high but pointed out that does not necessarily mean production has to be expensive. It is more about knowing what it takes to capture good audio, or how to position lighting when capturing a video.
Sam agreed with Emily’s comments and says he thinks about quality in terms of a series of levels that build on one another. The underlying content of the video is the base level – nothing else matters if this is not engaging to your audience. On top of that level is how well you write the script for the video, and then on top of that is more of the production elements. Of course, the video will be better with good audio and lighting, but these do nothing without a good topic and content. As Sam put it, the lower levels need to be excellent while the upper levels need to be at the right balance of cost and quality.
In terms of what arts organizations should consider outsourcing when creating digital content, Dave said it is simply a question of what you are good at. If it is not a core competency or interest of your organization, you should farm it out. However, if it is a competency you want to build, you should keep it in house and take the time to learn it. There must be a desire to want to do it, or you will never be good at it.
Several questions from our participants centered on two key themes: the ideal length of a YouTube video and the technical gear needed to create high-quality videos.
Ideal length: Emily joked that the answer to the first question – what is the ideal length of the YouTube video – is what your high school English teacher likely told you about the required length of a paper: however long it needs to be. It is all about whether the length of the video matches the subject matter. However, the length of videos can impact how the YouTube algorithm interprets engagement with your content. For example, Emily said they produced a series of 60 second videos that were very popular but given their length, they dropped the channel’s audience view duration which impacts the Youtube algorithm. Dave shared that the most valuable statistic in the YouTube algorithm is platform watch time – the length of the video doesn’t matter; it’s how long they stay on the platform once they leave your video. For this reason, he encourages linking to other content in YouTube videos (whether it’s your own or someone else’s). Sam said his experience has shown him that the platform tends to favor a certain amount of density of content. He doesn’t think arts organizations would have success putting up a full 2-hour opera or concert, but instead a dense ten-minute video on why a certain aria is the best in all of opera.
Technical equipment: Sam’s take on the technical equipment question is that once you reach a level where audio isn’t terrible and the video isn’t blurry, there is diminishing returns on investment. He personally uses an RE20 microphone and C200 camera when filming on location. Dave and Emily had similar thoughts, noting that it all comes to down to what you are trying to do. Will the quality of gear impact the content? Emily shared that the iPhone offers more than enough video capability for organizations just starting to experiment with digital content. Dave recommended an app called Filmic that helps you use your phone more like a cinema camera. All in all, our panelists agreed that major investments in technology are not required to make great digital content.
Measuring Success
When asked how The Field Museum measures the success of the Brain Scoop YouTube channel, Emily shared they measure it like the museum’s other digital marketing initiatives through things like website visits and clicks. The Brain Scoop has a huge amount of engagement compared to other social and media initiatives, but they view it as complementary to their other work. The museum does audience onsite visitation surveys and through these surveys the understand how many people are aware of the Brain Scoop and what percentage of people were motivated to attend because of their engagement with the YouTube channel. Through this data they can ultimately identify how many admission dollars come in because of the Brain Scoop YouTube channel. The channel also enables the museum to get funding and sponsorships that benefit other parts of the Field Museum. Emily emphasized that the true measure of success for the channel is how well it furthers the broader mission of the organization
When the same question was posed to Sam, he said his success is really about his two main stakeholders: his audience and his sponsors. He has access to a ton of analytics on each video to gauge audience engagement (e.g., watch time, comments) and he received performance data from his sponsors.
Closing Advice
In closing, we asked our panelists for one piece of advice for arts organizations wanting to do more with digital. Dave’s response was “start making things, keep making things”. Bad content is not what kills channels, the killer is if there are no videos to watch. Give your audience a collection of things they will enjoy and care about. Sam’s advice ran along them same vein: “You can’t really dip your toes into it, you need to dive in the deep end.” He added that you need to put a level of commitment into making new content, rather than simply repurposing existing content. There is a level of novelty required. Video content should be about expanding your core content, rather than replicating it. Emily closed us out with the great reminder that this is supposed to be fun and exciting and enjoyable. She views the YouTube channel as a funnel to achieve the organization’s broader goals. Without believing in it as tool to better your organization, you will not be able to commit to creating a lot of great content.
