Nate Woodbury helps speakers and coaches leverage YouTube to grow a massive following that brings in seven figures of revenue.  He is a master of efficiency whose brain is wired to see things with a results focus and he loves sharing the secrets and strategies that he uses to get YouTube results.

In this episode, Nate discusses how he got started with YouTube, why YouTube videos get so many more views than webpages, the importance of doing keyword research before recording anything, which keywords you should be focusing on, the keyword research tool that’s completely changed his business, why authenticity is more important than video or audio quality, how YouTube isn’t a quick-fix marketing strategy, his four-month strategy for growing your YouTube video views, how thumbnails are critical in click-through rates, why your thumbnail shouldn’t have the title of video on it, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Nate Woodbury’s Website
• Nate Woodbury’s YouTube Channel
• Nate Woodbury’s Podcast | Influence School
• Nate Woodbury’s Video | YouTube SEO | The Leaf Strategy
• Kris Krohn’s YouTube Channel
• Adobe Photoshop
• Canva

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

 

Transcript

Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me Nate Woodbury here, and he helps speakers and coaches leverage YouTube to grow a massive following that brings in seven figures of revenue. He is a master of efficiency. His brain is wired to see things with a results focus, and he loves sharing the secrets and strategies that he uses to get YouTube results. So, today’s going to be really interesting.

Andrea: Nate, it’s so good to have you here on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Nate Woodbury: Yeah, happy to be here. And I like the name – influence is a big part of what I do. I love that.

Andrea: Yes, I can tell. And so, Nate, how did you get started in YouTube? Like, what’s your YouTube kind of origin story?

Nate Woodbury: Yeah, so going back about six or seven years is when I made the transition from a web design service that I used to have. As a part of website design, I also did search engine optimization and to get my clients’ websites to rank on Google, I would create this SEO page, I called them. And we’d do a whole bunch of things from link-building, and articles, and infographics that we linked on Pinterest.

Well, one thing that we put on there was a YouTube video, a how-to video, and it worked. It got these pages ranked on the top of Google, but then I noticed something. I noticed that the video itself over on YouTube was getting fifty times more views and traffic than the entire SEO page that was ranking number one on Google. And that was eye-opening for me because it was a lot of work doing what we were doing. So, I started to make a shift and just focus only on the YouTube part. You could create one piece of content and get fifty times more traffic so that’s where it began.

Andrea: Wow, that’s awesome! Okay, why is that? Why is it that people are experiencing so much more traffic through YouTube?

Nate Woodbury: Well, when people are searching online, they’re searching for something, not necessarily a company or a specific website. If they have a question – you know, how to get rid of strep throat without antibiotics or how to invest in real estate with no money – they kind of want the answer to that question, and YouTube has become a great search engine for that type of content.

So, you can create a video that answers people’s specific questions, and that’s what people are wanting to find. And you know, comparing that to website SEO, you’re trying to make your website big and relevant and compete out there. But YouTube is already big in relevance. You just create the right type of content, and YouTube gets the traffic.

Andrea: Okay, so when it comes to you helping other people to start this – let’s say that they’ve got it figured out, they want to do it – what’s the first step?

Nate Woodbury:  The first step is keyword research, and that sounds intimidating. It sounds overwhelming, but here’s to simplify it. Right now, all around the world, there are people that are searching for you; that they have questions, and you have the answers. And when you do keyword research, you can find those questions. So that’s all it is. You’re trying to find the specific questions that people are asking, and now you know what to make videos about.

And I can give you an example. My friend, Katie Gutierrez, she’s an interior designer in Miami, and one of her areas of expertise is living room design. And if she were to come up in her mind with a few video ideas, “Okay, I want to make a few videos around living room design,” she could be creative and come up with some videos that would be helpful, and we’d give them catchy titles. But instead we did keyword research together first before she started filming. We found a list of twenty really specific questions people are asking about living room design, such as how to design a living room with high ceilings, how to design a living room with large windows, or – one that I really liked – how to design a living room with a corner fireplace.

And we found twenty of these type questions. And so one, it gives her a lot more variety, a lot more ideas of videos that she could film, but it also matches the video with people that are actually searching. And so this works really well on YouTube. One other point that’s really important that I want to bring up that’s different from traditional SEO research and in marketing is I go after phrases that have low search volume intentionally. I ignore the ones that have large search volume. The reason being is the large search volume phrases have high competition.

But I think the phrase how to design a living room with a corner fireplace, I believe that has thirty searches per month on average. That’s wonderful because those thirty people are going to watch the video all the way to the end. The YouTube algorithm sees that and thinks, “Wow, this is a high performing video. Let’s find more people like these thirty that we can promote this video to.” And so YouTube starts to become my promotion engine.

Andrea: Okay, that’s very interesting. So you’re saying that it’s more important to get people to watch through the whole thing and if that higher percentage is going to make a difference in how YouTube then ends up pushing it out to more people.

Nate Woodbury: Exactly.

Andrea: Wow! Cool!

Nate Woodbury: Yeah. And if you can go after a phrase that no one else is going after then you rank instantly, and you’ll start getting traffic instantly even if it’s a person a day.

Andrea: Wow!

Nate Woodbury: Now, just one person a day, at least you’re getting that instantly as opposed to posting a video and not getting any views sort of relevant, you know.

Andrea: Sure. That makes a lot of sense. All right, so people do a keyword search, they try to figure this out, but then I’m assuming that there are some technical things that people get intimidated by. I mean, certainly has been that way for me. So, when it comes to the quality of video on YouTube, how important is that quality of video and audio?

Nate Woodbury: All right. So, quality is important, but what’s more important than quality is just authenticity, and that’s a buzzword today, that’s a buzzword. So let me kind of explain that. I can go out and spend a huge amount of money on camera equipment, on lighting and sound, on a studio, and that’s not going to guarantee a single thing, right? It’s not going to guarantee that my videos are going to go anywhere or anything. But as an example on the other end of the spectrum, I can pull out my phone, and I can just be walking down the street and just talk and just have a conversation, and that type of video is more likely to actually succeed if it’s really me and I’m just sharing advice, or I’m sharing a story and I’m really connecting with people.

So, another note on the authenticity side is you don’t need to show up as an actor. You don’t need to show up and talk in a professional voice like you’re a news anchor or like you’re giving a stage presentation. It’s just talking and having a conversation to one person. Like you’re having a conversation with one person at a time because that’s typically all that’s watching your video at a time is just one person. So, you look right into the lens of the camera and you talk to them; that will get your results.

And so if there’s specific things that you want to do to make your videos more professional or whatnot, I actually recommend against making it look like a company or corporate. Like, you don’t need to worry about putting text or graphics on the screen because a lot of times, unless you really know what you’re doing, it looks cheesy anyway.

Andrea: Sure.

Nate Woodbury: So just start simple. You’ve got an amazing camera in your pocket, and face a window so you got the light coming in on your face so you’re well lit. And you know, if you’re holding the camera, if it’s close to you, the audio is going to be pretty good. So that’s where I say start.

Andrea: Yeah. Awesome! All right, so if somebody wants to have some sort of influence, they’re wanting to have a message that gets out there and that sort of thing, they kind of have an idea of their expertise, they’ve done the keyword search… Now, you have a resource about keyword searching, is that right?

Nate Woodbury: Uh-huh.

Andrea: Let’s go ahead and tell them about that now because I don’t want to forget that one.

Nate Woodbury: Sure. Yeah, and to preface this tool, because it’s so amazing… I discovered [it] a year ago, September. Prior to that, I was using multiple tools, a couple of softwares that I paid for, the Google AdWords Keyword tool. So, I’d use one to get some data, use another one to filter it down, and use another one to improve it and expand. And it took me forever to do, and it took me like a year to train one of my assistants to be able to do it for me. Okay, so fast forward to September of 2018, and I was at a conference and the company, SEMrush, they were an exhibitor, and I’d use them before. They’ve been around a long time. I used their software back in the day when I had my SEO company.

Well, they smiled when I told them my process and what I was doing, and he pulled out the iPad and showed me this Keyword Magic Tool. And so that’s the tool that I used with Katie, the interior designer. So, if we typed in living room design and then there’s a button that says questions, so after you hit search then you hit questions, and then all the questions that… you know, the twenty that we filled narrowed it down to about living room design, just all appeared right there. So that tool basically took all the mini-steps that I was doing and just put it into one simple tool. It’s awesome!

Andrea: Wow. That’s awesome! Okay, and we’ll link to it in the show notes, how people can find it, but if you want to tell us again at the end, that’d be awesome.

Nate Woodbury: Sure.

Andrea: Do people in, like, a corporate space, people who are wanting to be a thought leader, that sort of thing… have you seen people like that who not are necessarily coaches, but maybe want to be known for their expertise; are they using YouTube?

Nate Woodbury: Well, that’s a good question. I mean, in the world of YouTube, I’m kind of a part of two different worlds. There’s the entrepreneur world, and then there’s the YouTuber world and the YouTuber world, most of the people there started YouTube as a hobby. They had another career, but as their YouTube channel grew, they actually started to make money from ad revenue. They got approached for sponsorships. They got started to be invited to speak, and then they thought, “Okay, I guess I’m a business owner. I guess I’m going to be self-employed.” And so they quit their job, and they put on the hat of entrepreneur, and that’s most of the people that are in the Youtuber category.

The world that I come from is more on the entrepreneurial side. We have our product or service and I’ve really honed in on working with coaches and speakers, those who have some type of skill set or expertise that’s what they sell through courses, or through speaking, or events, or whatnot. And I’ve helped those people leverage YouTube because really just using that keyword research process. They can find the questions that people are asking them and help them really build a large following. So does that help?

Andrea: Yeah. That’s interesting. I think I could see it being beneficial for somebody, like, in a job if they’re considering other options perhaps or if they are wanting to speak alongside what they’re doing, that sort of thing. I can see that being beneficial too, especially if you’re wanting to, I don’t know, even be able to showcase some of your expertise so that people might want you to come speak and that sort of thing.

Nate Woodbury: Well, a lot of people will do that for a hobby. You know, let’s say that somebody got a model airplane hobby, and they put it out there. Well, eventually, I’ve seen channels like that really take off to where people are funding projects, “Ooh, I want to see you make this type of an airplane or see if this will fly.” And you know, they contribute to stuff like that. The other thing that I want to mention is YouTube is a long term strategy. It’s not quick-fix marketing, and it’s great to start now rather than later.

Even if you’re not quite sure where you want to go, you think, “You know what, I really want to step into that space,” then just get started and practice and get used to being in front of the camera. Start with one episode per week, and over time you’ll see which video… you know, over let’s say three months, you’ve posted a dozen videos. You’ll be able to look back and see, “Well this one got a lot more views, likes, and comments than the others. Maybe I’ll just make a few more like that one.” And you’ll learn the ropes along the way.

Andrea: So, in podcasting… I sort of learned it this way, that you’re supposed to start with maybe your intro video and three others – excuse me, podcast episodes – so that you have a few in the bank when people start listening to you, and then you build from there. Do you do the same thing with YouTube? Do you start with a few, or do you start with one?

Nate Woodbury: Well, yeah. I mean, it makes sense if you’re launching one video, and people come to your channel, and they see that that’s your only video. I mean, I can understand the logic behind that. And I did that as well when I launched my podcast. But at the same time, content is so searchable, and my strategy is so much focused on search that I guess it’s not as emphasized. I guess the reason that it is emphasized in the podcast world is because you’re really trying to do something in the first month or two, I believe, to get picked up by iTunes as “New and Notable” or something like that. Is that right?

Andrea: Yeah, yeah. But there’s nothing like that, there’s no equivalent to that on YouTube.

Nate Woodbury: Well, I have my own formula that I figured out that’s a four-month strategy if you’d like me to share that.

Andrea: Sure, if you want to share that. We’d love to hear it.

Nate Woodbury: Okay, so this is a formula that… it’s really aggressive, and the result is that you will get a spike. So what I mean by a spike is over the four months, it’s not really exciting, you’re having gradual growth, just incremental increases of views. But then right on the four-month mark, you just have a surge of views and subscribers. So we’re talking, let’s say you’re averaging – across your channel – you’re averaging a hundred views a day, and then all of a sudden you have 10,000 views in a day and 10,000 views the next day. And then when it settles back down, you’re at a brand new baseline. Maybe your average increased up to like 600 views a day. So it’s like a six times increase.

Okay, so here’s the four ingredients. One, you’ve got to do keyword research before filming, like we talked about. And I have a video on my YouTube channel called My Leaf Strategies. So if you ever want to know that strategy in more detail, my channel is Nate Woodbury, Leaf Strategy, you’ll find that video, and that will help you how to do the keyword research before filming. And the second ingredient is you want your episodes to be ten to twelve minutes in length, and that’s an average.  You can go a little bit less than that. I’d say, you know, I recommend at least seven minutes. You can go longer than that.

My best performing video of all times is actually a twenty-minute episode. So the ten to twelve minutes is the average. The third ingredient is you want your average view duration to be 45% or higher. So, if you have a ten-minute video but people on average are only watching one minute of it, that just gives you some indications, “Okay, what do we need to do to get people to watch more?” And oftentimes there’s just some simple things you can say at the beginning to let people know why they should stay to the end.

A lot of times I’ve provided consulting to people where I watched the video – I’ve got one video in my mind – and her content was so good, and in fact, it got better and better throughout the video. And I’m just like, this is a really valuable video, but people are leaving after forty-five seconds or a minute, you know, and so if she would’ve just said, “Okay, I’m gonna give you a quick answer to my question at the beginning, then I’m going to give you the back story of why it’s important, and then I’ll share with you some strategies of how you can really implement it.” That’s the long version. The quick step here is you got to have 45% average duration or longer. And then the fourth ingredient is you’ve got to launch five episodes per week.

Andrea: Oh wow!

Nate Woodbury: So that sounds aggressive, doesn’t it?

Andrea: Yeah, yeah.

Nate Woodbury: That’s the formula. So, you do my leaf strategy – ten to twelve minutes per episode, average reiteration of 45% higher, and you’ll launch five episodes per week – at that four-month mark, you’ll have a spike. Because that’s such a high amount of work, you can get pretty discouraged two or three months in because you’re looking at your channel, thinking, “Man, I’m working really hard, and this last episode only got seven views. What’s going on here, Nate? Come on, I need a spike like you’re telling me.” But we get to that four-month mark in, and every time, when you have these four ingredients, I’ve always seen a spike.

Andrea: Wow. That’s really cool. That’s a lot of videos, for sure. And so do you have people put, like… I oftentimes will see words on the front of the video to kind of like get people’s attention maybe, I don’t know. Do you do that, or do you have people do that?

Nate Woodbury: Well, thumbnail design is extremely important.

Andrea: Yeah, thumbnail design, that’s what I’m thinking, yeah.

Nate Woodbury: Right. So custom thumbnail is critical in getting your video to perform, and once you start getting enough traffic on your videos that you can get significant stats, you can do what’s called AB testing. So, you might design an original thumbnail that you think, “Okay, I believe that this is going to create curiosity here.” And then you’ll be able to track the click-through rate and say it’s 4.87 percent click-through rate. And then, with AB testing you can design a second version and it will compare the two, and oftentimes we’re looking for an improvement, right? So, “Oh, this one bumped it up to a 7.21 click-through rate,” and so you’ll keep the alternate version. Thumbnail design is a huge… it’s critical in success on YouTube.

Andrea: And then do you use the same title that somebody would search for? You know, like the title at the bottom? Is that the same thing that you put on the thumbnail? Because I often see it’s different.

Nate Woodbury: You want it to be different because you’ll always see the title of the video with the thumbnail.

Andrea: Okay. Yeah.

Nate Woodbury: The title will always be there.

Andrea: So it’s redundant.

Nate Woodbury: Exactly. You don’t have to have texts. I often do. I’ve found that the default rule is fewer words, the better on the thumbnail, and you want to create curiosity instead of, like, telling statements. So, if I were to make a video on how to get rid of strep throat without antibiotics – that’s the title of the video – instead of saying, you know, strep throat remedy, you know, that could be some text I could put on the thumbnail.

But what I think would perform better is “secret formula” or something like this actually works – you know, put a question mark like, “This actually works?” – and I have a face that’s like, “What?” Because they’ll see the title, and then maybe I’m holding up something that… you know, one of the ingredients is garlic so maybe I’m holding up a bowl of garlic, and I’m looking at it like, “This really works?” You know, something like that would actually create… I found that to create a lot more clicks, because there’s more curiosity. They’re like, “Is that remedy in my kitchen now?”

Andrea: Yeah, yeah, that’s cool. Okay, so I think that’s one of the big challenges with marketing, in general, is how do you create that kind of intrigue that gets people to actually take a bite, to click, to try it out.

Nate Woodbury: Yeah. The cool thing is you can just start. I use Photoshop, but there’s a free tool called Canva, and Canva has YouTube thumbnail templates.

Andrea: I love Canva.

Nate Woodbury: Yeah. It’s really simple. You can just go in there, and it will automatically set up the dimensions for you, and it has some stock images and color and fonts. You can just create a thumbnail, and start, and then, you know, you’ll learn to make improvements.

Andrea: Yeah, awesome. Well, Nate, this has been so helpful. You know, you’re working with influencers all the time, so when you think about the importance of having an impact in the world of, you know, maybe your own influence that you’re wanting to have, what kind of tip or piece of advice would you like to give the influencer that is listening now?

Nate Woodbury: Well, the first thought that comes to my mind, I’m thinking of a message that my client and friend Paul Jenkins got from a lady in India. Paul had made a parenting video. I don’t remember the title of it, but he often makes videos such as How to Get Your Kids to Listen Without Yelling – you know, just great parenting topics. And the lady in India said, “I was having problems with my son. I watched your video, and I tried it, and it worked. Thank you so much.” And that just… that really impacted him, especially because, you know, we’re in Utah, and on the other side of the planet in India, somebody had watched his video, and he was able to help a mother with her son. And that’s influence. That’s influence right there.

And so my advice is you have experience, and therefore that gives you expertise. You have advice that you can share, and so simply by making a video that answer somebody’s questions and provides them that help or value, you’re giving that for free on YouTube, you are an influencer now.

Andrea: Hmm. That’s cool. All right, so, Nate, you’ve already shared with us a couple of places where people can get in touch with you and find you, but would you kind of recap that for us? And also maybe tell us a little bit about what you do to help people with their YouTube channels.

Nate Woodbury: Well, sure. So I do full production. I help with channel strategy, the topic strategy, then we’ll do the filming, have a full filming production, and editing, and launch, and thumbnail design. So, we basically do it for you. It’s expensive, okay? So it’s not a service that I really offer to the masses, but I currently have thirteen clients, and that’s what I do. Best places to find me are on YouTube at Nate Woodbury, or I do have a podcast as well, it’s Influence School.

The other thing that I just really want to emphasize is that this really works. It’s not theory. And so maybe this is bragging, but I want to share some numbers behind my largest channel, the Kris Krohn channel. He teaches real estate investing. We started that channel at zero, you know, brand new, and it’s now almost… we’re like 5,000 subscribers away from a half a million, so 500,000 subscribers. And what results that’s getting for us is about $600,000 per month in sales revenue. That channel is generating so many leads that $600,000 a month in sales. And that’s the potential.

In the world of YouTube, 500,000 is kind of small, especially for the amount of income that we’re generating. I just really want to share that just to show the opportunity on YouTube is really, really massive. I’m glad that I could be here to answer some questions and put you guys in that direction.

Andrea: Awesome! All right. Thank you so much, Nate. We appreciate you and your voice of influence in the world helping others find theirs and use it.

Nate Woodbury: Yeah, you’re welcome.

Andrea: All right. Well, we’ll talk to you soon.

Nate Woodbury: Alright. Bye, bye.