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Guest: Joe Orbaczewski

Release Date: 4/16/2023

Welcome to Trulyfit the online fitness marketplace connecting pros and clients through unique fitness business software.

Steve Washuta: Is YouTube the best platform for health and fitness professionals? Can a social platform also be a search engine? Should you create a video first or record only after you have a thumbnail and title? If you don’t have any presence at all on YouTube? How can you start today and be successful? We discuss all this and more in our upcoming all things YouTube episode.

Welcome to Trulyfit. Welcome to the Trulyfit podcast where we interview experts in fitness and health to expand our wisdom and wealth. I’m your host, Steve Washuta, co-founder of Trulyfit and author of Fitness Business 101.

On today’s podcast, I speak with Joe you can find everything about him at Dr. Yossi Joe on Instagram. Joe is a by-trade physical therapist he has a bunch of high-level certifications. The first time he was on the podcast we were discussing golf and golf fitness. But today, we shift gears to talk about YouTube and YouTube marketing.

Now yes, the majority of the conversation surrounds how to use YouTube as a fitness and health professional. But honestly, all of these tips work for any professional. We discuss what has changed in YouTube over the past few years how it has adapted as a platform, and why it may be the best platform to use if you could only pick one.

The metrics behind what is important in YouTube, are subscribers still important to look at? Should you be looking at views is there a click rate percentage that’s more important than another? And then in the second half of the episode, we really go into specifics and descriptions and analogies and situations.

And the decisions Joe would make or I would make given that particular set of parameters. It was a fantastic conversation. I always enjoy talking to Joe I’m sure we’ll be on the podcast again talking about something from physical therapy to golf to social media. With no further ado, here’s Joe and I discuss all things YouTube.

Joe, thank you so much for joining the Trulyfit podcast around to hear remind my listeners who have not heard you in round one who you are and what it is that you do in the health and fitness and now more business and marketing standpoint from day-to-day.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, super excited to be here against you. So thanks for having me. My name is Joe, I am trained as a physical therapist, I have my doctorate in physical therapy I’ve been practicing for almost 10 years.

Joe Orbaczewski:   I also have my certification, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, CrossFit level one board certified in orthopedics, all these things, I still am practicing PT, part-time, I also coach CrossFit a couple of days a week and I also do some personal training.

Joe Orbaczewski:  So lots of things. But I am now also I guess you want to consider me like a YouTube channel manager slash video editor. Different names there and just been doing that for mainly health and fitness professionals.

Steve Washuta: Was this more of a passion project? Did you not expect to go down this path? How did that start? Because somebody with all of your credentials, and especially someone who could just you know, from a physical therapist standpoint, most people think well, I could just get a job anywhere and work nine to five, why do I want to break out on my own and, and sort of do something that is much more entrepreneurial? Like Well, how did this all come about?

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yes. So in 2020, my wife and I moved to Maine, which is where her family is just to be closer to family, we weren’t really where our family was. At that time, I started my own kind of PT business, personal training, focusing on the golf, and fitness niche.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And then, in 2021 2022, I said I’m gonna kind of dial down on one social platform, which I decided was YouTube, I really liked it. So I just spent all of the time learning all the things, doing all my own videos, all my editing, creating thumbnails, making the videos but like I said in that time, we just spent a whole bunch of time learning about YouTube, how it works, what’s best practice that’s not what you shouldn’t be doing.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And then that pretty much transformed I’m in Anika’s online business group with that’s led by another physical therapist. And she saw every week we can share our own things like Sell, sell our own stuff for the most part, like not spam the group, essentially. And I just posted my YouTube videos that I was posting weekly, and just said, Hey, if you know a golfer and your life or whoever can benefit from this, feel free to share it.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And so she had me, she noticed I was like the only person doing YouTube and was like, Hey, can you present to the group on YouTube? You’re the one that seems to know about it the most. Can you do that? And I was like, Yeah, sure. And she was like after we were done. She was like, I want you to do my YouTube stuff for me.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And I was like, Okay, I’ll do that. And then in all of this, basically, just as most people probably know, is like a PT or anyone who kind of works at a location or is dependent on a person as a personal trainer or PT. There are points where I was, you know, at one point I had COVID and I wasn’t working and had to be out, you know, but I felt relatively fine. And I was like I’m just not making any money right now, what can I do to also make some money.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And so this kind of like helps spur that as well, where I can still work from home and kind of be a little bit flexible. And if I have to be home for whatever reason, I now have a nine-month-old daughter. So sometimes you know, you’re home with your kid when they’re sick, even though it’s hard to get some work done.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But like even when they’re taking naps, right, you can squeeze in something potentially, versus not making any money at all. So that kind of spurred that. And she has a relatively large, large social following. And she just recommends me to a lot of people, which I’m super grateful for. But that’s essentially how this started.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, I love that. Because even in like intra industry, I noticed and I tried to beat this into a lot of personal trainers’ heads. Like, don’t let compliments roll off your back. If somebody is like asking you to do something. And they’re telling you you’re good at this, you might not like quite understand that you have a special skill set yet because it wasn’t that difficult for you to hone that craft. But it is right you have to listen to those people, right.

So it’s like the yoga person who’s so great and headstands. And everyone asks, like, Oh, how’d you do the headstand? How’d you do the headstand? But for some reason, she niches out into breath work, because she loves it. So yeah, I get that you love this. But like everyone’s telling you you do a great headstand.

So like you should specialize in headstands. Like you eventually, you have to come to the thing that you do best. And that people want to always say like from a business standpoint, you don’t create a market, you find out what the market dictates and you adjust accordingly. And basically, you didn’t have to do anything the market came to you.

They said, Hey, like, we realize you have a different skill set than other people. And we’re going to ask you to help us and I think that’s great that you just said, Okay, well, I guess this is the route I’m going people need this. I enjoy it. I’ve learned it and I’m ready to pass this knowledge on to someone else.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, no, it’s, it’s been super great. I actually, I really love YouTube. And I love doing all this and anyone who spends time on it, there’s a ton of analytics. And it’s almost, when I when we’re doing videos for this other PT she, you know, you get to see which how it’s doing.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And I’m kind of a data nerd. And I just look at all this stuff all the time. And we basically just compare it to like gambling in Vegas, for the most part, like there’s so many things can happen and lead to certain things. And just like, for me, it’s just a fun game. It’s, I almost feel like it, you can never perfect it, but you’re always trying to get better.

Steve Washuta: Alright, we’ll start with convincing me. So I already know your answer to this question. If I was a new fitness professional, or if I was a, you know, a right now a fitness professional, and I was gonna say, you know, I’m going to dedicate all of my energy and efforts to one platform, it sounds like you’re going to pick YouTube, convince me why I would use YouTube over Instagram over Facebook over a newer platform over Tiktok. Why would I use YouTube? What is it giving me that the other platforms don’t?

Joe Orbaczewski:  If I’m gonna go with that, which I would, I would say, the biggest thing is that YouTube is a search engine. It’s the second largest search engine in the entire world. And it’s owned by the first number one search engine in the entire world, which is Google, right.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Your videos can be resurfaced years later, or be shown years later, whereas I don’t use tick tock but like on Instagram, you make a post, and then obviously pushing reels, maybe if your reel goes off, you know, it might get shown maybe like two weeks later, for the most part. But generally speaking, it’s probably only lasting maybe a couple of days, maybe a week, at most, for the most part, right? And then it’s dead.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And then you’re making more and more reels, you know, whatever it is, you’re posting frequency, and then people don’t see them again, right? Very rarely do people go to your page, probably and scroll down and look for a specific post. And a lot of times people will save a post, right? And most of the time, people probably don’t actually go back and look at them, to be honest, right? I mean, just think about your own own habits.

Joe Orbaczewski:  I do it all the time I say post and I never really go back to them. But I think the biggest thing is that you can potentially create, quote unquote, evergreen content, just because it’s on YouTube doesn’t mean it’s gonna get seen, but it has the potential to years later. If you do all the things right, and provides a lot of value. And people seem to like it for whatever reason.

Joe Orbaczewski:  A video that is 10 years old can still be seen today. And then I think the other thing a lot of people do know this. It’s not super simple, and it varies, but you can make money via YouTube with ads, and whatnot. And that’s not really the same in terms of like Instagram or Tiktok or some of these other platforms. Although it is possible.

Steve Washuta: My most successful youtube video module, I’ve never tried to really use YouTube as a platform is me hopping on the camera after surgery and going down the things I wish I would have known prior to my double and greenall hernia surgery. And I don’t know it’s got you know, maybe 10s of 1000s of views and people comment I don’t like thank you so much for this information.

This is great. And it’s because I’m sure people are typing in something to the extent of like, you know, preop and greenall hernia surgery, right, something to that extent. And like you said, it is a search engine, a video based search engine, whereas an Instagram, I mean, I don’t ever search hashtags. But I certainly don’t EVER type more than one word in the videos that I get shown are simply targeting me, I don’t search on there for video.

So I do think like you said, having that evergreen process and it’s more importantly, it’s evergreen, educational, and that’s what we’re, that’s the space we’re in is an educational space where we’re trying to teach people and help people do things. So I think it’s it’s very fitting for personal trainers, especially personal trainers, who have good information.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, I think the other main thing with that, too, is that in terms of being found, and being shown, like obviously, YouTube has its own algorithm, and what you watch in the past and search into Google and type and watch into YouTube will end up surfacing more stuff to you, but the fact that you can present educational material, and again, most reels, if you think about tick tock or Instagram, again, most of the time, you know, they were originally 60 seconds or less.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Now, I think you could do more, but generally speaking, most like reels or tic TOCs. If they’re longer than 1520 seconds, a lot of time people are just swiping away, they’re not watching the whole thing. A lot of times you can’t even get all those analytics. But most of the time, if you’re making a 62nd reel, and you look at your analytics, most people aren’t going to probably watch the whole thing.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Whereas, and well, to go back to that real quick is how much information can you actually give that’s valuable to someone and 20 seconds, it is possible, right? But at the end of the day, it’s it’s really difficult, you need to be a pro at being able to give value within 20 seconds, right.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Whereas YouTube, you have a much longer opportunity to do that. And I think people when they go to YouTube and they’re searching for something or even if they’re just browsing and they something comes up, they have a different intent.

Joe Orbaczewski:  When you go to YouTube versus Instagram slash Tik Tok seems to be more kind of mindless scrolling, kind of like entertainment almost. Whereas when people go to YouTube, some people still go there for entertainment. But if they have an intent in terms of being educated, they’re okay with sitting in front of a three-for-20-minute video if it’s helpful.

Steve Washuta: I also think the ratio again, I have no data on this, I’m sure you may have data on this the ratio of some like a like or a full watch of a video to a then follow, but then getting that person to potentially be a customer or whatever you want to say like a long term follower. The ratio is way better on YouTube, I have other companies and one of my companies is a registry.

I put out a real on on one of my other companies that got over 2 million views in that time. I had a two followers, I can’t even directly correlate or connect, right? I don’t know if there was a causal relationship, those followers might have not even been the people who watch that. But I had a real one with 2 million views. And that only gave me potentially at most, two more followers in that two-week time, right.

Whereas in YouTube, I noticed that maybe I’ll get 100 views and then I’ll get like seven or eight people to subscribe to the channel, right? So like, I feel like you can’t beat those sorts of ratios, because it makes sense. You’re really associating me with that video, as opposed to the real sometimes it’s just like, it’s just like a character almost.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, I don’t know, if I have any specific data in terms of like views correlated to subscribers. Yeah, but I do find that while most people are now saying that subscribers on YouTube are kind of a vanity metric. Because before you, when you would log into YouTube, you would get served your subscriptions, like whoever you were subscribed to, if they have new videos, those would get put in front of you first.

JJoe Orbaczewski:  Now that’s not the case. In fact, most of the time, it’s not, it’s more, maybe videos you haven’t seen, it might be from people that you are subscribed to, if that’s who you watch a lot of, but you’re also gonna get served other videos, right? So subscribers in terms of like you as a creator, they’re great, especially if you’re trying to be part of the YouTube Partner Program and you’re trying to grow them or just create a an overall community, whatever it may be.

Joe Orbaczewski:  I think those are still helpful. It’s kind of more of a vanity metric. Now, people are saying obviously, it still plays a role. But at the end of the day, when someone subscribes to you, they are more likely to take a look at your content and if it is valuable, right be shown that but I would say I do agree in the fact that at least in my experience do with my YouTube videos.

Joe Orbaczewski:  When videos seem to have way more views. I end up getting more subscribers and you can see where they’re coming from to where says, again, like, I just have found recently on Instagram, my reels have just overall like engagement and views have just been down for whatever reason. I mean, I don’t know what it is, but I’m not going to complain about it.

Steve Washuta: I mean, there are bots on every platform, but it looks like the IG rules. Again, this is just from a pure, novice, technological standpoint, it looks like there are a lot of bot views, even likes, right, you’re looking at these accounts who are liking and clicking on these things. They have zero posts, you know, two followers and they’re following six people or something.

There’s a lot of that. And it’s because they’re trying to keep up with tick tock and they know that the likelihood that you will continue to post reels is somewhat based upon how successful you’re being, which makes sense, right? We all want to continue to be successful in something and if we’re not, we’ll give it up.

So they you know, when someone sees like, oh, look, I only have 250 followers, but I got 3000 views on this reel, they’re more likely to then continue to put out those reels.

And then if you’re, you know, we don’t live in a vacuum. If you’re spending more time on Instagram rules, you’re spending less time on Tik Tok, right. So all these things are competing. So I do get how he plays into him.

But you know, I want to ask you, because you just mentioned how YouTube has changed a little bit they’re showing, they’ll show you other things outside of maybe just your subscribers. What else has changed in YouTube? If someone hasn’t logged on in two years? How would you describe maybe changes that YouTube has made?

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, I think, in general, the biggest one that has changed, because this was in like 2018. I think 2017 2018 is called ad pocalypse. Most people were being shown videos that were basically clickbait most people think of YouTube and think of clickbait when they look at thumbnails for the most part, as soon as you enter the video, it’s not even what you thought it was about, which isn’t true anymore.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Because all that mattered was the clicks basically. So they’ve changed their algorithm to be more about, you know, are things getting clicked, but are people actually sticking around and watching your video, right? And then are you satisfying the viewer? So there’s really not any more quote unquote, clickbait. I mean, there’s probably still is, but you’re definitely going to get penalized as a creator.

Joe Orbaczewski:    So those things don’t get surface basically. The other main thing is, they have obviously ventured into short, firm, short form vertical video to compete with Instagram and Tiktok. They’re called YouTube shorts.

Joe Orbaczewski:  The other main thing that they’re really pushing right now are podcasts. They are pushing podcasts hard. They hired someone specifically just for podcasts. They’ve hired people specifically just to have their podcasts on YouTube.

Joe Orbaczewski:   It’s, I think they’re going to end up trying to be you know, they’re trying to be the one and only place that people go to for all kinds of entertainment, whether it’s music, podcasts, video, TV, whatever it is. Those are the major changes that I would say have have have occurred within the last few years.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, those are those are pretty big changes. I know too. It seems you could tell me if I’m wrong here. You know, a lot of the videos needed to be glitzy and glam on YouTube, it seemed like more so than the other platforms, right? So something like Tik Tok really, not only allows but almost promotes people being more, I’ll use the term raw. And, you know, YouTube always seemed more glitzy and glam.

But I don’t know if that’s still the case. I do see a lot of people on there who are just saying no, I’m just gonna go on there. And, and host a live podcast, I’m gonna go on there. Like I’ve seen people just turn the camera on for like four hours and just talk and they have 10,000 people watching them.

So I think that’s a big benefit for YouTube that they’re not so like, oh, I need to have like, professional like, videographer and editor to go about this. Is that the case?

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, I would say that’s, that’s true, right? It’s going to depend on your niche, which again, most of us are going to be more in the educational realm. If you think about, like refined videos, and kind of really entertaining quick pace. The first person that comes to mind who’s at right now like the most famous youtuber is Mr. Beast, he kind of does kind of crazy, large scale things. If you’ve never watched a video, just type it in basically.

Joe Orbaczewski:   And you know, there’ll be a ton. His are very fast paced, very highly edited, lots of stuff happening. And like you said, I would say more for our educational space. And for most people, now they’re allowing you to be more raw and that’s what people want. Honestly, when they’re looking for that kind of stuff, for the most part, it’s not, doesn’t have to be overly edited. Highly glamorized. I think a lot of people think about Alex from Ozy and kind of see his videos and they’re same kind of thing.

JJoe Orbaczewski:   They’re also educational, but they’re highly edited, very fast-paced, lots of like attention resets, and things are popping up and on and off the screen. Again, when you’re trying to educate someone on something, whether that’s like a hip flexor stretch or like how to get stronger on people don’t want that. You do need to have like attention resets to like to keep people’s attention, but when it’s that fast pace You’re probably most people are probably gonna get annoyed.

Joe Orbaczewski:  So, really keeping it bare bones, for the most part, is probably more so the way to go, which is super helpful, right? Which means way less work, it’s easier on you. Or if you’re hiring out, it’s easier on that person to like, it’s not going to shouldn’t necessarily cost you a ton.

Steve Washuta: Do you know anything about the I guess you would say that YouTube like live not necessarily strategy but how it works meaning like, sometimes I’ll like I’m into cryptocurrencies and sometimes I’ll like to watch these guys who just like, sit on the computer for four hours, and people will be typing in and comment and they’re just running their own, like live talk show essentially.

Is that? Is that becoming bigger? Are there other competing platforms? Can anybody do this? Do you need some sort of like special setup or YouTube privileges?

Joe Orbaczewski:  I’m pretty sure almost anyone can do it, you there might be a subscriber. Minimum, I think it’s pretty low. At this point, before there was a good amount, I want to say if there is one, it might only be like 100 subscribers, or maybe 50. If there is one, typically speaking, sometimes you may or may not be able to do it from your phone, it depends.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Again, I think there are some minimums on that, potentially, in terms of like maybe operating system or against subscribers. For the most part, I don’t think you need that big of a setup. If you’re going to just use like your laptop with a webcam for the most part, obviously, you can get very intense and highly integrated in terms of how much stuff you have to make it kind of more of a show.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But yeah, people just kind of go on, like you said, kind of just have their own, like talk show at this point. And people are on and watching and commenting and, you know, doing all kinds of stuff, right? I think that’s part of like, if you want to create a community, the first person that comes to mind, I don’t know her at all, but just listen to podcasts with her. Her name’s Emily Baker, she’s a lawyer.

Joe Orbaczewski:  She switched, one of her like, favorite things to do is like pop culture, right? So one thing that really, really set her off, in terms of like creating a community, she’ll go on and talk about celebrities and what’s going on in the world with their law and stuff like that. Like when Kanye released all of his contracts.

Joe Orbaczewski:  She broke it down, right? And that is super helpful to people who have no idea about law but are interested into pop culture, right? She did all live streaming of the entire Johnny Depp. Amber Heard case, right. So she had tons of people watching along with her asking questions, she’s breaking things down as it’s happening, like talk about one heck of a niche, but people love her.

Joe Orbaczewski:  She had like 1000s upon 1000s of people watching live, I think she had more people watching her live stream of the court case and her like commentary than like people on whatever it was streamed on, I don’t even know, which is wild. And it’s a really good way again, if you’re trying to get into like the YouTube Partner Program to like, you need to get into the partner program to get money from ads, you need to meet X amount of subscribers, which is 1000.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And you need 4000 hours of public watch time within the last 365 days. So every person that’s watching is that’s a great way to like build up watch time. But there are people who do gaming, right people who just stream games and then playing basically in you asked is there another platform that does this is basically Twitch, I don’t know much about Twitch, but it was again, mainly for for gamers who are streaming their gameplay, and people can watch along and, you know, give you money.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And people can give money if you’re again in the partner program, you know, support you just for for doing it. And just being a part of the community all kinds of stuff, which is pretty wild, but also really cool. If you’re trying to develop that community, whether it’s on Twitch or YouTube, whatever it may be.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, and I, you know, I started thinking about the trainers who want to just build a library of workouts or exercises and how good YouTube is for something like that, right? So forget about just like being on camera talking about, you know, where the short head of the bicep attaches to or something, right? Like, if you’re like, Hey, I’m going to do this quick, 30 minute hit workout.

You know, and you just like you build all these workouts and you have these libraries. I know for me, like if I don’t get the chance to like go to a yoga class, because I have a 22 month old and she’s sleeping I have to stay in the house, the first thing I do is go on YouTube and type in like beginner yoga or 30 minute yoga. And that’s, that’s what I do.

So you have to think that that’s only getting bigger that more people are going to be using that to do those sorts of things, especially now that we you know, online virtual training is is all the rage now. And I think not it almost seems like not having some sort of foothold on YouTube really on every platform.

That’s what I always say like if someone searches for you, and maybe they’re only looking at one platform to me it’s such a mistake to not have some footprint on that platform. Now maybe if you have a reason you don’t want to be on that platform right maybe like it’s a tick tock thing so it’s like a security privacy I get that but you know if to like not be on LinkedIn doesn’t make any sense, right?

Like I don’t need to have a foolproof While on there and be be on it every day, but even if I have links on my LinkedIn that lead to my major thing, right? So Joe, for example, would have all of his links directed back to his YouTube, because that’s his main platform. Right? I would have mine maybe back to my IG something to that extent. So I think it’s, it’s a mistake to not have some sort of footprint and all of the socials and especially now it seems like if as a fitness professional, YouTube, especially,

Joe Orbaczewski:   yeah, degree, I mean, I really think you know, someone’s going to dial in on one, just focus on one before you start expanding on others in terms of like, work and all the posts that you’re doing. But like you said, once you have, you know, you think about your handle on Instagram, right, or whatever, and you want to claim that one and you want it to be the same across all platforms, like you said, go to all the things right, go to LinkedIn, go to Twitter, go to tick tock, if you want to have that on all those platforms, but you don’t necessarily want to be active on all them, then you should do it for sure.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And then like you said, have all of those ones point to your main channel, also let it point to your website. And hopefully you have one along with an email list. Because on all of these things, you don’t own any of it. Any of it can go away instantly. Someone can lock you out of your account, someone can hack you, right? That’s always the thing. And I always recommend people to have that because you don’t own YouTube, you don’t own Instagram, and they can just delete your channel, get rid of your account for whatever reason, even if you didn’t do anything wrong, right could just be gone.

Steve Washuta: Now, yeah, there’s talk about that a lot. We, you’re not paying for anything, they don’t owe you anything. They could rip away those things in a second. Or they could just change the business model, right? So tomorrow, Instagram could say like, Hey, we’re not going to do any likes.

And we’re not going to show anybody how many people are following you. So it’s like, okay, well, then that’s that’s the whole shtick there, right? It’s like, that’s how you gain your notoriety is by looking how many people are following you.

And if they don’t show that number, then who are you now you’re nobody, you just wasted your whole time building that one platform, and it was ripped away from you. And then from a monetary standpoint, that’s going to affect you as well.

So I do think it’s important to have your your feet, your toes dipped into the water and all the different socials, and I, you know, I talked to a lot of podcasters, who are not on YouTube, and I think it’s a big mistake, you know, and they go,

Well, no one watches it. They just listen, I go, yeah, no one watches mine either. But I don’t know when that could change. And also like the visual component of the podcast, is you can then use those clips across all of the platforms, right? So then I can I can now clip that and put it on Instagram and put it on LinkedIn and put it on YouTube shorts and put it on all these things and you don’t know what’s gonna go viral next.

So to not, to me, it’s like it’s it’s such a mistake for people to say, oh, people are just listening to me. They’re not watching me know that they eventually need to see your face. In order for you to grow and put up you’ll put that voice to your face. I don’t know what you think about that.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, I think I mean, videos bigger and bigger, right? It’s apparent Instagram changed from just a a still image picture sharing platform to mainly now being video right? Video is dominating, and it’s probably going to continue to dominate.

Joe Orbaczewski:  There may be a switch at some point, right? Where it’s gonna go back to just pictures or whatever. But YouTube ad the lat last I heard is the second largest podcast, where people discover and listen to podcasts. I don’t know what the number one is off the top of my head. Could be Spotify, it could be Apple, either one, right? The thing of it is, is that even so many people don’t even I’ve listened and talked to people who just turn on YouTube.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And then they go about their day. And they’re it’s on in the background. They’re not even watching. Right? So one, what difference does it make if they’re watching you or not? If they do want to watch you though, it is really helpful to see who you are. I mean, think about Joe Rogan, right? He has a visual podcast that people watch.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And they’re like, three, four hours long, some people will sit there and watch some people don’t. But like you said, The other advantage to that, at least in terms of podcasts is you can now clip those clips, you know, exciting parts of that, post them on other platforms, post them on YouTube shorts, whatever it is, make shorter, longer form videos out of it.

Joe Orbaczewski:  The possibilities are endless. If you just have your audio aspect of that, right, or you’re not showing your face in terms of a podcast, there’s you’ve now very limited what you can do not many people want to sit there and watch a little waveform on a screen. It’s not very exciting.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, I do think there is a lot of people like you said, who just want to kind of check in with it. So probably 80% of the podcast, they’re just listening to him. But then here and there, they look at the screen, maybe it’s when there’s a big laugh, and there’s something kind of that connects you to being almost in the room watching both both people smile and laugh.

So I think it is important to give people the option, right? Why not? First of all, from a technological standpoint, it’s not a huge extra step to go ahead and do this, right. So you’re not talking about hours and hours and hours of work, especially if you’re a podcaster who already knows how to edit, it’s fairly quickly to be able to put this up and to clip it everywhere else.

You know, I want you to I always ask people to do this from like a personal trainer standpoint, so it’s going to be interesting to see how you describe it from a, you know, a YouTube, you know, manager standpoint, walk me through your video experience from the second you’re about to film your thought process to how you film. Are you using the phone? Are you using a computer to them? Do you? Do you edit immediately? Do you put it out? Walk me through your whole process?

Joe Orbaczewski:  Okay? This is what I always recommend to everyone, you want to think about your title and your your title and your thumbnail first before you do absolutely anything else. So you have a video idea that comes to your mind, right? Whatever it is, let’s talk about let’s just say why you should deadlift something wrong. I’m just like thinking, you know, just like getting stronger with the deadlifts.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Let’s just say that. Okay. That’s your like video idea. Obviously, it needs to be a little bit more intriguing than that. So let’s focus on getting stronger, you know, what’s the appropriate rep range for strength? With a deadlift? We’ll just do that. So you want to think about what your title is and what your thumbnail is, you obviously want?

Steve Washuta: I’m gonna quickly interject here sorry, real quick question. Should it be a question is that

Joe Orbaczewski:  it doesn’t have to be a question. It can be anything, right? It could also be, it could be like a day in your life of a personal trainer, or like a virtual personal trainer, right? People are interested in that doesn’t have to be a question per se. But you want to think about that, because that’s going to dictate what you talk about in your video. If you do it the other way around. One.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Now you’re like struggling to come up with maybe a title and or a thumbnail. And you come up with something maybe that’s great, but that doesn’t really lend to what you already talked about your video, so then you either have to rerecord or, or like try to figure out how to fit your video. So if you can think about your title, and your thumbnail first.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And what I always recommend, there are three things that people want are like that, get attention, curiosity, your audience’s desire, or a pain point that they’re trying to get away from, for the most part. So if you can hit one of those things in your title, and then complement your thumbnail with one of the other two, that’s going to make your video more clickable.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Now, the reason why I say you really want to focus on this is because if your title and your thumbnail, don’t create intrigue, and people don’t click on it, you can have the best video in the world, you can be the smartest person providing the most value. But if no one clicks on it, because your title and your video aren’t good. Doesn’t matter. No one’s ever gonna watch it. So once you have your title and your thumbnail, I generally come up with my title, almost exactly what I want.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And then I have an idea of my thumbnail. From there, I also think about the hook. So just like on Instagram, as soon as you’re like going through and you have a reel, you’re trying to hook someone if you don’t hook someone at least on Instagram within like the first three seconds, most people might swipe away, right? You have a little bit longer on YouTube, where you might have like 30 seconds or less.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But generally speaking, you want to get right into the content, but you want to hook them right. So if we go back to deadlifting, what’s the appropriate, you know, rep range to get strong with a deadlift? You know, you could say something along the lines of like, you know, there’s a lot of info out there in terms of like, what’s the appropriate rep range? I want to make sure you’re doing the right thing.

Joe Orbaczewski:  So when you’re doing deadlifts, and then just go right into your content, right? That’s really quick off the top of my head, maybe not the best, but you get the point. Yeah, you

Steve Washuta: something like all the things you’ve learned about deadlifting chances are, they’re wrong. Next, we’re going to talk about in this video, why you should be doing something completely different than you already are.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Exactly something along those lines. Exactly. So and then get right into the content. Most people probably think about YouTube and the old way of like, then after that people will be like, Hi, my name is Steve. I’m a personal trainer, I’ve been training for 30 years, whatever it is, right? People don’t want to do that.

Joe Orbaczewski:  They’ll skip over it. Or they’ll just leave your video like, don’t even worry about that have a text box that pops up and says who you are, or just be like, Hey, I’ve been working with people doing deadlifts for the last seven years. My name is Steve. And I just want to make sure you’re doing the right thing. And then just get right into it. Like that’s a quick enough way to introduce yourself.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And then from there, you do all of your your value your content of your video, just like you normally would, whatever that is. So you plan that hook. And then basically from there, this gets easier once you have more videos, but I also think about where to send them next, before I even film as well. So after you talk about, you know, rep ranges for gaining strength with the deadlift, maybe you want to talk about you know, maybe your goal isn’t to get strong, but you actually want to build some muscle.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Check this video out, right? That’s the ending of your hook. So what I always tell people is like you don’t want to finish your story or like you could send them to like, you know Even though we just talked about getting stronger with the deadlift, you want to make sure you’re doing it the you know, with proper form. So check out this video here, right? There’s a million deadlift videos with proper form, whether they like what you just said, they might go watch your next video, right.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And that’s a good sign to YouTube to keep people that you’re satisfying the viewer basically, that you keep them on the platform, just like any other platforms goal is to keep that person on. So if you can keep them watching for longer, especially your videos, that’s a good sign. Then once you have all of that, then you actually go ahead and film. So then you film your content, I always recommend batching. So you don’t necessarily have to edit right away.

Joe Orbaczewski:  As soon as you’re done filming, I always try to get a couple of title ideas with thumbnails to couple of video ideas with all that stuff ready to go. In terms of like scripting, I don’t script out word for word, usually I do for my hook just to make sure I have it down. But after that, I usually just have like outline points of what I want to make sure I hit and then just try to hit those in my video.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And then from there, go film, all those videos, you know, have a change of clothes, make sure everything’s set ready to go. Film all of them, then you have everything and then try to edit in batches to and then go from there. That’s pretty much the typical content creation strategy for the most part.

Steve Washuta: Now when you put those now the I guess the next step is here, and I have a lot going on in my brain here. But I want to sort of finish this, I want to complete this. So when you put those videos up, then right you put them into YouTube, I think maybe a confusing part is for some people is like, there are a lot of things to be filled out now.

So as in an Instagram, let’s say real or Video Base, basically, you just write some quick content that maybe 20 word description, and then you send out 65 different hashtags, and boom, you send the video out. But in YouTube, there seems to be a little bit more to fill out, right? So almost like when you have a website, it’s like a meta description and all these different tags. How exactly do you go about that process and is that more daunting than then then you can describe?

Joe Orbaczewski:  It’ll get easier over time. For me it’s easier. So right you have your title, which is again, hopefully you’re hitting like a good keyword in there again. So like deadlifts, getting stronger with deadlifts. Back to our example, something like that, you have a description. That’s pretty much where obviously you would describe the video.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But that’s another place where you put a lot of other stuff really, you shouldn’t spend too much time describing the video, just give them another intriguing thing about the video, almost almost like another hook exactly like what you did that basically describes that. But in there, you want to have your other parts to point people to like connecting with you on Instagram or your website.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Or maybe you have a lead magnet or something like that to get them onto your email list. That’s where you want to put all that stuff. The other thing in there is like chapters, they call it video chapters that basically timestamps. So if you talk about, again, back to our our example of like appropriate rep ranges, let’s say we talked about that, at minute one, you’d write that down, you give it a title for that like appropriate rep ranges.

Joe Orbaczewski:  You can then to say if you’ve talked about inappropriate rep ranges, that you start talking about that a minute to put those in, that just helps the viewer find where that stuff is because you can see that on the playhead when someone’s watching the video.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And then after that, there’s a lot of other things too, like you have tags, you can put in subtitles, all the stuff, which helps just give more more data to YouTube to kind of figure out who to send this video to, if that makes sense.

Joe Orbaczewski:  So there is a little bit more stuff to do. It really shouldn’t take you it might take you a little bit again, just initially to get started. But once you get into it, it’s not that difficult. And there’s a lot of like presets that you can set just like title, language, video, language, all that stuff that you can already preset in your settings to be English or whatever language it is for you. Which makes life a little bit easier.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, I want to go back to a point you made and I know you actually made a small video about this on your Instagram. I’m sure it’s a YouTube short as well about how people take too long to get to the point. So you know, I watch a lot of golf videos on YouTube, right? That’s my number one thing I do on YouTube is just like watch golf videos, right? So I might type in like for iron Stinger shot.

And you go to the golf video and you click on it and they’ll show a picture of the guy doing the you know, quick video of the guy doing it. And then he goes into a 42nd like intro about like, Hey, guys, you know, this is who I am. And I make videos like this all the time. So please hit the like and subscribe button. You’ll see that I do videos like this two times a week and it goes into this tirade, and then I’m out I’m out of the video I’m on to the next guy.

I don’t care how good his information was on hitting that four iron stinger. I want to I want to see him do it right and I probably would have subscribed had he just shown me information right because I know that this guy is going to be getting to the point and saving me time. So explain to us how important that It is and also it seems like maybe a new transition because I don’t I don’t think everyone’s doing that yet.

Joe Orbaczewski:  It’s definitely not I think a lot of people are who are used to doing that, that have maybe larger followings still do that, because that’s worked for them in the past. And they already have larger followings, right? So they kind of have that notoriety the those subscribers, but like you said, they may not be growing as well, we don’t see any of that stuff. Right. So like you said, you were ready to click off.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And just like get away from the video. I think most people these days want that information, especially when you’re looking for when you’re searching for something, and you’re trying to get educated on it. Like, the biggest example that I have, for most people is like, let’s say you have a clogged toilet, right? And it’s overflowing, and you don’t know what to do, right? And you go to YouTube to search, you want to get to your content as quickly as possible, because this person doesn’t care who you are.

Joe Orbaczewski:  They don’t care about anything. They want to know how to fix their overflowing toilet right now. Right? That’s what people are doing, probably for all of our content for the most part, right? Like, I’m sure we can be a little entertaining, and you should be. But most of our stuff is going to be educational. So people are going to be searching for the most part. Not some of this stuff may just pop up and they may just find it from browser suggested to.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But for the most part, again, they want to get right into the content. And I think that’s part of what’s kind of transitioned from just all the short form vertical videos is like, show me the content right now. Right? I don’t necessarily think that we have shorter attention spans, we just want stuff as quickly as possible.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And I know, as personal trainers, everyone knows that, that everyone wants to lose 20 pounds yesterday, right? When we know that that’s not the case. Yeah, everyone wants, everyone wants that thing as as quickly as possible. They want to be gratified right now.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, I think that’s such a great point to sent, you know, someone like Rick shields, who’s who’s a golf guy that I follow whatever, he’s got probably 3.5 million followers, he can do this lengthy call to action on the front end, because he’s already has 3.5 million followers. But that doesn’t mean that you should do what he’s doing. Right? Because he has, that’s like you said maybe outdated in some respects.

And that also, he’s already earned, like a showing and a respect where people are not going to necessarily click off him. But if nobody knows who you are, I think that’s such a great point, you’ll make each video like someone is under a time constraint, like their, you know, bathroom is overflowing, and you have to get to the information as quick as possible. And I think that people, unfortunately are trying to copy the big guys when they don’t have the clout yet to do that.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, I think one of the other things that people talk about, that was part of the old way of part of that description, a lot of times if you go back and you listen or watching, it’s like, Hey, guys, welcome back to the channel, all this stuff.

Joe Orbaczewski:  A lot of times, people this is the first time watching a video like this is they’re not returning, they’ve never seen anything from you, that also goes to points of like, almost even if you make a series of videos, right? If you talk about like, let’s say you just did your own personal transformation, as a personal trainer, you lost a lot of weight, and you just like recorded it, or you go back in time and talk about it right or you’re doing an experiment to lose and lean out, whatever it is right?

Joe Orbaczewski:  And you’re you film yourself over a month. Having part one, part two, part three, like Welcome to part two of my video, a lot of people probably didn’t see part one, to be honest, some people may have. But now they’re already lost.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And they may also leave right you even though it’s part of a series, you need to make every video, a standalone video by itself, regardless if it is part of a series or not. Obviously, at some point in the video, you may talk about that, that it is part of a series. But if you watch a video and you’re like, well, now I’m on part two, I don’t even know where we are.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Someone may if they’re not that interested, they may try to find part one, or they just may leave they’re like, well, whatever I’ve already I’m already out like, I don’t know what part one is. I’m already behind. I’m like, we’re gonna worry about it. Let’s click on to something else. So that’s the other old, old thing that I think people are so used to seeing or doing that shouldn’t be done.

Steve Washuta: I just put out an Instagram reel or a YouTube short, I’m really excited about it. It is eight hours later I check on it. It has six views. Now I’m angry and I decide to delete it. Tell me Joe why that’s a bad idea.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Because one, I think it’s always good to just leave it up as people can see like as you go back and you remind people like hey, this is where I started right? You can remind yourself to write how maybe maybe you’re new at this and this isn’t great.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But YouTube is always testing your content. In fact right now what I’m seeing with myself and what I’ve listened to a lot and some of my clients especially with shorts, you put it out you may get your normal amount of us are even less than normal.

Joe Orbaczewski: And it just kind of flatlines typically right now honestly for like a day and then they retested with people and they sent it back out and it just like shoots up again when you like look at your graph For whatever reason, but this can happen way later I had a video on my golf fitness channel that this was kind of before I decided to necessarily go right into golf fitness.

Joe Orbaczewski:  So I made a plantar fasciitis video. It wasn’t getting that many views to start off with whatsoever and I share it a little bit I don’t necessarily recommend this. I was just going into Reddit I found a subgroup and Reddit that was just all plantar fasciitis. I didn’t like spam, I legitimately tried to provide value. And I said, Hey, if you want to learn more, check out this video. Three months later, I like look at my channel, like tons of views on like what is happening? I go and look.

Joe Orbaczewski:  There’s this plantar fasciitis video is just like taking off people because it got resurfaced to the right person or people were watching it more YouTube started pushing it out more pushing it pushing it pushing it pushing it right. And like if it if I decided to delete that when it wasn’t doing so great. Or I was like you know what, this doesn’t really fit my golf fitness niche anymore. I’m going to get rid of it. I wouldn’t have gotten I think it has 28 29,000 views.

Steve Washuta: I imagine it’s going to continue growing considering we are a few days past the masters and the most popular, I would say athlete of all time withdrew from the Masters with plantar fasciitis and to the extent where the announcers not blaming the announcers, it’s not their specialty. They know so much about golf, but they didn’t know how to pronounce it, right. So they’re saying plantar fasciitis, they have no idea what’s going on.

They’re like, it’s something in his foot. So I imagine your video caught even more steam. And that’s to say, you don’t know what’s going to be trending, right, two or three or four months later in the media, that that allows that to happen.

There was a bunch of videos on like, let’s say when right before the Ukraine, Russia sort of war started, there was a professor who was describing sort of lights on YouTube. He was just doing like a, like a history lesson, like a small college basically talking about the history of Ukraine, like when it you know, when it developed as a country and their relations with Russia, and they had like a few 1000 views.

And then you know, the war starts and people want to know more about what’s going on. And before you know it, it’s like a six, 7 million watch YouTube videos. So that’s another reason I think, to add to your point where you don’t know what’s going to be trending. And your topic could be evergreen down the road.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, there was someone a YouTube like educator creator who just interviews other YouTube creators and their process. He does technology tutorials, basically, on different apps, platforms, whatever it may be. And he had already done one on Zoom. This was before the pandemic happened. And just like his Zoom video, I mean, he was doing relatively well before but his Zoom video obviously took off, right? He had, he had obviously no clue that the pandemic was going to happen, or Zoom was going to be the platform for connecting with people.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But because he had already done it, it just took off, right? I mean, it was shared by a ton of people. Now viewed by a ton of people exactly to your point, you never know what’s going to be trending eventually or again. YouTube may just take your video for whatever reason and start pushing it to people just to test it out. And it may connect with people at that time for whatever reason.

Steve Washuta: Are there metrics that you’re more concerned with? You did mention earlier. That you thought subscribers may be a little bit of a what you consider it a vanity metric? Are there other metrics that you are concerned with, that other people should be concerned with? Or do you think that maybe we should just take a step back. Produce good content and the metrics will come?

Joe Orbaczewski:  I do think definitely always still like taking a step back. And maybe not necessarily getting too deep into your analytics is huge. Just you know, produce the content. Especially if you haven’t done this at all, right? You got to build up some videos just to get some data. There are things to think about though.

Joe Orbaczewski:  So again, click through rate is a big one, click through rate is basically your impressions, and how many, which means how many times your thumbnail was viewed on any part of the platform? And how many times it was clicked on in comparison to those impressions.

Joe Orbaczewski:  So you get a percentage. Everyone always asked what’s a good one? It really just depends on what’s what’s yours. Right? Generally speaking I would say if your click through rate is like 7% or more. That’s pretty good to be honest.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Now again, it’s going to depend on what your average is always just tried to beat yourself as the big thing that pertains more to your thumbnail and your title. So if that’s relatively low, or it’s not doing so well, that means people just aren’t clicking on your video.

Joe Orbaczewski:  So there’s something off there, right again, that’s what’s going to matter most to get people to enter your video. If that’s low and people aren’t clicking, you can have the best video in the world.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Doesn’t matter if no one’s watching it. So if that’s not doing so great, or it’s not getting better, or it’s getting worse, you know. You need to like really start focusing. And refining your technique in terms of creating your title and your thumbnail. Just to create more intrigue so people start clicking on it. That doesn’t mean create clickbait though. The next thing would be probably average view, percentage or average percentage viewed, whatever it’s called.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Now there’s two things Users like average watch duration. And then there’s average percentage viewed average watch duration can really change depending on how long your videos are, right. So like if people are, if you put out a 40 minute video, and people are watching, you know. Five minutes of that, which sounds not like a lot. But it probably is, honestly, five minutes of that.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But then, let’s say you start making less of that, and you start making more five minute videos. And now people are only watching a minute and a half, you’re gonna see that go down. But that doesn’t really make sense.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Because your videos, there’s not much more to watch, right, it’s going to naturally go down, where average percentage viewed is a little bit better, because now we see where people how long people are staying on that specific video and how much of that video they’re consuming, which is really important to YouTube in terms of continuing to share your content, and that video and just other videos that you have. If people are staying on for a very long time and they’re watching more of your video.

Joe Orbaczewski:  That’s like a signal to YouTube that they really like it, you’re doing something right, so they’re going to share it more. So that’s going to be a big one. Even with that they show a graph. In your video of like. Where people are watching more or leaving. You can see like up and down kind of graph.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And in that you can also say like, alright, what am I doing here? That’s good. What am I doing here, that’s not so good. And try to refine now your technique inside your video when you’re filming and editing and those kinds of things.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And then lastly, you have to do a little bit of digging for this, there’s so much analytics, but they don’t always make it the best or the easiest in terms of like end screen clicked. So at the end of your video. You can put something that pops up on the screen, usually directing to someone to another video, which is usually the goal.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Again, if you’re trying to grow on YouTube and share stuff, you want people to stay on it and see more of your stuff. If one if you can get people all the way to the end to that point. That’s huge one because that just means people are staying around. But to if you can get them to click on another one of your videos, that’s even better.

Joe Orbaczewski:  I wouldn’t necessarily worry about that as much as maybe the first to get good at getting people to click and watch your video and then get good at getting people to stay around. Those are the two main things to start with.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, that’s good information. And I was thinking as you were talking about getting people to stay around sometimes. Although you want to give people what they want right away.

You can kind of slow drip it and then finish with the closer right. So for example, if when I watch golf videos. And a guy is saying like Hey! I’m going to show you, you know three different ways to hit a stinger.. First I’m going to show you the most difficult way. And then I’m going to show you the way that even amateurs can do it. I’m probably going to stick around right. I’m going to watch the really difficult way that he does. I can’t do it with a two with a two iron.

And then he’s going to show me how he does it with you know. A three iron and then he’s going to finally show me how he does it with a four and a five iron, which is more likely something that I can do.

So I do think there is something about thinking about your video. If I do want these people to stay to the end. if I have a longer video, how am I showing them this? And how am I getting things prepared in an order in which I’m keeping it intriguing. But there’s a climax so to speak.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, and this is definitely tough. It’s tough to do in general. And this definitely a skill you have to practice and get better at it, including myself. So doing something like that exactly what you said, like. I’m going to show you three ways to do this. One of which is you know, probably more advanced or more expert level. and all the way down to the amateur level, right? Probably most people who are watching are probably amateur for the most part, right.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And if you save that, to the end, people are going to people are going to probably watch through right? Some some techniques that people say. At the beginning of the video was like you want to stick around to the end to you know, to learn this one trick, or for the bonus tip, whatever it is, right? It’s probably amazing.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And how many people don’t actually like click forward ahead of the video, because now they’re like in right there, your your hooks, right? The other thing to do is maybe work on telling a story, right? If if we talked about, let’s just stick with a stinger example.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And like you’re just doing yourself like, Hey, I learned how to hit a stinger. You know we want to wait to the end to like. Finally show you how it clicked for me and what I what I figured out to make it work every single time. Right? And so now you’re telling a story of like, you have how that works. But at the beginning, it’s not going to work right? So you’re going to maybe show all of your stuff now people are into their into a story, right?

Joe Orbaczewski:  And that’s what’s helpful sometimes, and doesn’t have to be a, you know, a Marvel movie, kind of lots of tense action and lots of you know the world is at stake. It’s like, can I learn how to hit a stinger and show what happens, right? Like there’s tension here. That’s the other thing that you can do to during right is talking about? One of the best things that you could do in terms of. Like keeping people going is using the word but like this is what you want to do.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But right now There’s tension already, just with that people want to know what’s next, what happens next. So then you do that again. And then you do another way to lead them on. The worst thing that you could do is just saying, and, and this and this. And this just kind of goes on and on. And people just kind of get lost. And they may just lose attention and stop watching your video for the most part. So that’s one way. The other thing to do is definitely, like start doing some attention resets.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And this just like, it’s probably more so with editing for the most part towards the end. But like zooming in or zooming out on your frame. Not necessarily like during. but like just cropping intercropping out just a little bit to like, reset attention. Or changing the angle of the camera or having some text pop up on the screen. It’s amazing. I never noticed this before. But like, when you watch TV, how many times the camera angle changes to a different person. Or they zoom in or zoom out or they show something else.

Joe Orbaczewski:  It happens so much. You don’t notice it when you’re watching TV, and if you’re not paying attention to it. But once you do, like next time you like watch a TV show. Watch it how much that happens. It happens. There’s so many within 10 seconds. It’s crazy.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, yeah, I have noticed that recently, because I’m trying to pay attention to it. And even now. It looks like the reels and the Tiktoks people who are successful in it will purposefully like put like a glimmer or like a flash in the screen.

But they’re they continue to talk meaning like they might just be talking like me. But there’s only maybe four seconds of talks will be me saying like. Do you know what happened in 2018?

And then there’s like a quick flash on the screen. And then it’s the person continuing to talk. But it looks like it’s breaking up the conversation right? Looks like I’m watching this a little four, five, second clip.

So there’s just something that goes on with our brain. Right where we’re more likely to. Rather than stare at that person talking the whole time for them to break it down. It’s like me watching. If I’m watching a two minute video. It’s like me watching I don’t know, like 60 small little clips. As opposed to just a two minute video.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, so one of the things that you can do like as a trainer, and what I was doing with my golf fitness channel, and to go back to like your example with the stinger. Let’s say you’re making this video. right showing people how to hit one are you learning one. Have some B roll and B roll is technically what you put on top of your a roll when you’re editing. But that’s what gets seen on the screen.

Joe Orbaczewski:  So if you’re talking and you’re a roll describing what you’re doing, but you have B roll on top of it, the B roll is what will be shown but your a roll will still be kind of what’s heard.

Joe Orbaczewski:  So what you could be doing right is having you talking about how you were struggling to hit this right and you’re videoing yourself just like talking head like this, but then it goes to you at the golf at the driving range, right and you have different angles of view hitting video, maybe it’s sped up sped up just a little bit to like, not be super slow, something along those lines. But that again, just creates a new thing in our minds and just allows us to pay attention for longer.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, that’s a great point. I think going back and forth to between the a roll and the B roll. And having different versions of the B roll is important. It’s going to it’s going to keep us connected to the video watching that go on. Now that takes a little bit of time to be able to edit that way and different programs. I want to get into that I’m gonna see what programs you use. I use for my video editing a program called Camtasia.

It’s very simple. That’s why I recommend it to some people who don’t have like a video editing background. And just want to learn quicker now, it doesn’t have as many features as like, the high level Adobe programs. But again, it’s simple. So you have to just like anything else in life? You have to weigh out like do I want to learn this faster? Or do I want to be the best version of these things? But what programs do you use? And what would you recommend to someone?

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, I would first of all recommend the program that you know and can use the best is the one you use. I started off using iMovie. Which is probably the equivalent to Camtasia. I’m pretty sure Camtasia is free. iMovie is free comes with any Apple product comes with your phone. It’s very bare bones and basic, you’re very limited with what you can do. But it gets the job done honestly.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And it’s very simple, quick and easy. I shouldn’t say easy. But relatively easy to learn in comparison to more of these high level editors. Which is like Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro. I use DaVinci Resolve for my editor.

Joe Orbaczewski:  It’s a free software, but has the capabilities of like Adobe Premiere and I didn’t know how to edit before I started doing this like I knew a little bit very bare bones like it was all iMovie for the most part, and I just learned how to do stuff and I want you to videos on how to do things in DaVinci Resolve and same thing happened when I was watching and learning doing iMovie like I just watched videos of learning how to do it.

Joe Orbaczewski:  That’s why I got so good at it because I tried to try to get better at it just like with anything else. In terms of have, like thumbnail creation, I just use Canva. Most people know what that is, it’s free, I have the paid version. It’s not that costly, it’s really helpful to help remove backgrounds for the most part. That’s really the main thing that I pay for.

Steve Washuta: I have a question about that, because, and this is a less, maybe less technical question. But you know, is creativity dead? It seems to me that thumbnails videos, tic TOCs, virality. Whatever you’re doing YouTube, I don’t actually have to be creative. I just find out who’s trending. And I make the same exact video but put my face on it, am I wrong? convinced me I’m wrong.

Joe Orbaczewski:  You’re not wrong. For the most part, I would say there are really no new ideas, if you think about it. For the most part, in reality. Most things are just recycled with a little bit of a new twist on it, which is probably the way to go. Because if you’re going to come up with something totally new, it better be really good. Or it’s probably gonna suck, to be honest.

Joe Orbaczewski:  I don’t think you don’t want to copy people, right? You can use the same kind of style. Kind of see what’s working for them, but still put your spin on it, just copying someone is really not the way to go. Like if you try to be we’ll go back to Mr. Beast here and do what he does. And for those of you who don’t know, he does like crazy things like he recreated squid game.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And basically recreated the whole game and had people go through it, he actually spent more money doing his video than what the squid game spent to actually, like, produce all their whole show, right, which is crazy. So like, he, if you started to do what he did. Which is not possible at this point. but like you’re not new, it’s not novel, people are gonna be like, you’re just copying Mr. Beast, that’s not what you’re doing. Right.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But you know, find the styles that work in your niche for the most part. And it doesn’t have to be, again, I wouldn’t copy and but try to be close to it. It doesn’t have to be totally novel or new. But put your spin on it right? Like watch, I highly recommend going to quote unquote, competitors and seeing what they’re doing right? Like what’s doing well, what’s a hot topic for them?

Joe Orbaczewski:  Maybe you can talk about it, listen to the video, say like, Hey, they didn’t really expand upon this, I can talk about that. One of my biggest ways, if you’re out of content on YouTube. For the most part, don’t know what to do is like watch a competitor’s video that did well scroll through the comments. People are asking questions all the time that either that person didn’t answer. Or did not make another video about, there’s a video for you right there.

Steve Washuta: So true. I never really thought of that. But there’s so many times you see, people again. I go back to the only videos that I watch on YouTube, which are called videos, where someone asks like, hey, how do you compare?

You know, these new cobras to the 2018 version of those cobras, right? They don’t ask questions like that. So okay, well, there’s your video comparing the 2018 Cobra forge text to the 2022 Cobra forge texts. Which one should you buy, there’s there any differences.

Joe Orbaczewski:  That’s a great video like not to cut you off. But like, I already envisioned the thumbnail, right? Like you have four irons. To the left of whatever the 2018 version for ions to the right. And you just have Cobra, whatever the name of the irons are. And then a versus like with a split down the middle people are going to be interested in that.

Steve Washuta: Yeah, and there’s, there’s so many options for you to do that in all in all things. And I do think speaking on that. I just wanted to touch on this. And see what you think also is that it doesn’t always have to be informational. If people start to trust you. You could also do more of like your take on what it is as opposed to like teaching right? Those are I don’t know how I’m not using the proper parlance here.

But like me teaching you how to. Again hit a stinger would be the equivalent in my in the fitness world with like me teaching you how to do the perfect hinge motion, right. But I can also just get, like two different kinds of let’s say hex bars.

And I can be like, This is the reason I use the Titan X bar over the whatever x bar over the you know. Because I believe the Titan X bar has better grips, and the threading is better, and I can step into it easier. And I’m explained to you, like a, it’s like a product review of some sort. I think there’s a lot of room for that in the fitness world.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of times, like you’re saying maybe we get bogged down with providing just information for the most part of saying, like, let me show you how to hip hinge properly. Or these are the three best exercises if you want to grow your glutes or your biceps. Whatever it is, right?

Joe Orbaczewski:  Which are great videos, I’m not saying don’t make those but there are a lot of other ideas that you can do that change you up to from people in that are just doing those types of videos, where like you said,

Joe Orbaczewski:  Now you give your take on that product review or you give your take on you know, these lifters in terms of like shoes or the best shoe that you like to do for use for running or you know, training whatever it might be right like give your take on them and you may not even be comparing you’re just saying like Hey, I bought these new shoes and you know that are maybe popular and you’re like I used them and I personally think that they suck.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And here’s why. Right? Like, people, eventually that may not be a huge thing. But like, if you think about it. You’re creating what I would call maybe more community content. You’re giving more people a chance to learn about you. which is really what matters most, right? Like people are going to connect with you not necessarily your channel. It’s more about you, they want to learn about you and who you are. And I’m sure in that kind of video, you’re going to share more about yourself, right.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And same thing like you can talk about this is one thing that I would do on my Golf Channel. And you kind of mentioned a little bit earlier, but like, you can talk about trending topics within your niche. So to stick with the golf fitness niche, right, like the Masters just happened this weekend.

Joe Orbaczewski:  It’s a major championship that occurs every single year. John rom one, he’s well known to do, he works with TPI. He’s well known that he’s a big strong hitter. People are going to be searching masters, people are going to be searching John ROM. over, you know, the next week. Probably they’re going to be searching what equipment he used, what clothes he wears, what was his fitness routine that helped him win a major championship, if you can be more timely on stuff like this, it can be really helpful obviously, with this isn’t the best example.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But to go towards, like, let’s talk about CrossFit, CrossFit open happens every year the workouts come out, you can literally talk about what you can do to prepare to strategize what you did, what you didn’t do. If you can find those kinds of things to and your your niche. Whatever it is those like major events. You can always like one create content around that. But now you have content when it comes out every year or semi annually whenever it is, right.

Steve Washuta: Yeah I was just thinking like a great thumbnail would be like what wedges did. Or like wedges that Rahm used to win the 2023 Masters. And it’s like him holding up the wedge. But like the wedges blacked out or there’s like a white thing over it. So you can’t see the head of the wedge, you have to click into the video. To see that he’s using the Callaway or JAWS wedges or whatever, right.

So like, there’s so many things you can do to continue trending. And I also think just to stay on this topic is. It seems to be important to throw a few things at the wall and see what sticks, right. So if you’re a fitness professional, and again. You love showing certain yoga poses. or you love talking about the proper way to get into hinge. Fine, make some of those videos. But then you do a video on like. Everyone loves the tank tops you wear and you’re like, Oh, this is how I style my own tank top.

I get it from this brand. But I cut this off, and I tie this together. And I do this. And that video has like 1000 More views. And the other one well guess what? Like, again, you don’t create a market, you find out what the market dictates and then you adjust accordingly. Maybe you need to start making more of those videos.

So I think it’s good to have three or four or five different like. The kinds of videos and then see which ones are doing well use those metrics you talked about to say. Hey, listen, like I can still do this other videos that I enjoy doing. I’m still gonna show people how to hip injured, do my favorite yoga movement. But ultimately, if I want to gain the following. I also have to talk about my specialty. The T-shirts I make.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Yeah, exactly. I think you know, we think about there’s only one way to make a video. And a lot of times again. for fitness people who are educating. It’s you standing in a gym or at your house. Whatever it is, and you’re just educating on whatever the topic may be right? Think about doing what people would consider like a vlog style. Right? where you’re holding the camera and walking around showing people throughout your day.

Joe Orbaczewski:  But like, it doesn’t have to be throughout the day, you could go to take your camera, go to a park, right and say like, Hey, you know, sometimes you want to get outside and work out and you don’t have any equipment or access to any but a lot of times parks do and I just want to show you what I would do. If I was you know, wanting to go to a park and workout right? Like, now you are providing a different spin on something, you’re creating a change, right?

Joe Orbaczewski:  And this is where maybe going back to your creativity question comes in, right like using those elements of other types of videos. Again when you think about a vlog or you think about like someone who talks about fashion or you know. Just talking about their day for the most part. But like, you’re taking that style of video and now putting it in your niche with what you do.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And really kind of changing it up are people probably doing that probably. I mean I’m sure that’s not like a novel idea. I just came up with, but there’s an option for you. And it’s changes things up for you one and people like that kind of style that you do. Like you said, you got to kind of go into that for the most part. Like having those different types of things. Is going to be helpful to help you figure out what you like. And don’t like to do, but to kind of what resonates with the audience.

Joe Orbaczewski:  And if like you said, you don’t have to give up your other ways of videos that you’d like to make. But if this is what’s kind of trending and what people kind of seem to connect with with you. You got to if you want to grow on YouTube and grow that following you should probably lean into it.

Steve Washuta: So this has been fantastic information. Before you go ahead and tell us about what. Where we can find you best. Whether that’s YouTube or Instagram or handles or maybe reaching out directly for your email. I just want to Say that you make fantastic videos, especially for people who want to learn more about YouTube. They’re quick, they’re very digestible. They’re easy, people can just follow along and look at them.

If anyone wants to find out more. We have not gone over half of what you need to do to be successful on YouTube. Joe did a really good job of explaining everything but ultimately, right this is he’s still learning. He’s still growing. And that’s what social media is, right? It’s ever evolving. It’s ever changing and trying out new things.

I really recommend following Joe and watching the videos. You know, starting your footprint on YouTube. If you don’t have it or advancing your YouTube footprint. If you’re if you’re just starting out. You’re not being successful. Tell us where the audience can find you via those socials where they can reach out to you directly with questions.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Sure. Thanks so much for the compliment, Steve, I appreciate that. I was trying to give out tactical advice and make it as simple as possible. Probably the easiest way to reach out to me. The only place that I give like YouTube education is on Instagram. And I am at doc Joe. On Instagram. You can reach out to me via email at Joe at pure drive. physio.com

Steve Washuta: Awesome, easy enough. My guest today has been Joe, thank you so much for joining the truly free podcast.

Joe Orbaczewski:  Thanks, Steve.

Steve Washuta: Thanks for joining us on the Trulyfit podcast. Please subscribe, rate, and review on your listening platform. Feel free to email us as we’d love to hear from you.

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Thanks again!

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