I had to create a YouTube strategy for three new clients:

Client #1 has 1M YouTube subs, 660k TikTok followers, and 260k Instagram followers.

Client #2 has 125k YouTube subs, 150k X followers, and 950k Instagram followers.

And client #3 has a Facebook group with 800 people in it. Nothing else.

I’ll tell you how I approach this further down…

But the problem?

I had to finish all of this in under a week.

So I get started on client #3 first, thinking it would be the easiest.

Oh man was I wrong…

Within an hour of starting research, I was already overwhelmed.

I was watching video after video of his competitors, and I just didn’t know what I was looking for. What the heck was I supposed to do next? I made zero progress.

This doesn’t usually happen…

I’m a YouTube strategist after all…

But since I only had 24 hours to finish this, it’s like my brain froze and couldn’t think.

So I did the only thing I could think of …

I wrote everything I knew about doing YouTube strategy research.

It took me an entire day to write all of this out, which means I only had a few hours left the following day to finish the strategy for client #3. 

But as my favorite Abe Lincoln quote goes…

Give me five hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four hours sharpening the ax.

The very next day, I finished the first YouTube strategy.

And just last night, at 9:02pm CST, I finished the second YouTube strategy.

Today, I’ll likely finish the third.

And it’s because I finally wrote down our approach.

We believe the video itself is the strategy.

That’s why our YouTube strategy is just a list of 4-8 video ideas.

Nothing matters more than publishing a video people love to watch.

This is what leads to views, subscribers, and revenue.

Which is why our agency follows Mr. Beast’s philosophy:

Wake up and think about how to make the best videos possible.

But what makes ‘the best’ videos?

We look at three things:

1.) Positioning: This is how to make your video idea stand out in a crowded market. We watch as much competitor content as possible so we know what everybody else is saying. Then we position our ideas to fill the gaps. This is the hardest, yet most important part of the video.

2.) Framing: This is how to make each section of your video sound new. The mistake people make on YouTube is sharing ‘free information.’ Yes, people want free information. But that’s the minimum barrier to entry. What they want even more is confidence, validation, and connection. We frame each piece of ‘free info’ to make the viewer feel one of these ways.

3.) Resonance: This is how to transfer emotion from the talent to the viewer. Marketing is about making the viewer feel something. What’s the best way to do that? Emotional contagion. We write video scripts the talent is excited to read, because that excitement will paradoxically be more important than the script we write to begin with.

Now, we don’t create any of the answers above.

We find them.

And we find them in the research.

In fact, we research until our eyes fall out of our skulls.

Because research is the strategy.

Which brings us to our last question…

What exactly am I researching?

Again, there are three main things we look at:

1.) The Content Landscape: This is the client’s existing content, industry outliers, and SEO opportunities. I spend most of my time here.

2.) The Market & Archetypes: This is the demographics, core emotions, persuasion triggers, present pain points, problem stacks, market sophistication, unique mechanisms, limiting beliefs, experiential map, and market overview.

3.) The Hero Brand: This is the social optics, offer ecosystem, Hero’s Journey, villain brands, and philosophy.

Then our final strategy includes five things:

1. Positioning: The gaps to fill in the market.
2. Ideation: The next 4-8 videos to publish.
3. Monetization: How we’ll generate leads.
4. Engagement: How we’ll get comments.
5. Distribution: How we’ll drive video views.

That final document is probably one page long.

But that’s because we do over 100 pages of research to start with.

This is how our agency does YouTube strategy.

All we do is focus on the video itself.

Nothing else matters.

We have a harsh but humbling belief that we follow:

If you’re not getting views, then your videos aren’t good.

99% of channels we see are producing poor videos…

But they don’t even realize it.

I don’t know what happened in the last couple years, but the quality standard people allow on their YouTube channels is criminal. Their videos are mediocre at best, yet they have the audacity to question why their channel isn’t growing.

It’s not about posting more, it’s about posting less.

One remarkable video can outperform 100 mediocre videos combined.

This is especially true now since everybody wants to get on YouTube.

There’s going to be more content on the platform than ever.

So the question is…

How are you going to stand out?

The answer to this question determines if you experience breakout success or become just another ‘channel that tried.’

And your breakout success all comes down to that one little thing:

The video.

Focus on this and you’ll be far ahead of everybody else.

Now, I need to write three long-form scripts and four short-form scripts in the next 48 hours. 

Plus I need to binge the final act of Arcane season 2 today.

Oh the fight between working and relaxing… 

This is Week 14 of building my business in public.