Starting A Channel

No Nonsense Whisky has been my baby for nearly 5 years now and I’ve learned a lot since the day I decided to pick up a camera and take my whisky enthusiasm to the interwebs. I’m not a whisky expert. I hold no qualifications or industry experience. Nor am I a video production specialist. Everything I have learned about whisky and YouTube is either self taught or under the guidance of friends.

When I started the channel, there were but a handful of channels covering whisky around the world. Some are still going, stronger than ever, and some have sadly disappeared. And now there are more and more channels coming through every day.

So here, today, I humbly submit my opinions and advice to anyone thinking of starting a channel or in the beginning of their YouTube journey. Hopefully, these pointers will not only see you have a smooth start but also help you on the long hard, road to success.

Why should anyone watch you? Figure out your USP

This is the first question you should ask yourself, and it may well be a difficult question to answer. The professional world calls this the Unique Selling Point (USP) and it’s essentially what you bring to the table that other people are not. It maybe that you have a unique perspective, or want to cover a different aspect of the niche. Having a USP is utterly critical to gaining traction in the YT world. Figuring out what yours is should be step 1 before you even start, if you want to hit the ground running. That said, there is no shame in figuring it out as you go, or even shifting focus later down the line.

A few examples. The Whisky Vault. The have an emphasis on entertainment and comedy, but they’re also distillers and marketeers. Aqvavitae is all about spreading the word and creating community. Myself, I take the traditional review format and try to boil it down to just what’s necessary (not particularly unique these days but it was when I started!). And for new channels, Kanpai Planet is doubling down on a sub niche, Japanese whisky, from the perspective of a Brit in Japan.

Immerse yourself in The Algorithm

You know your stuff about whisky and that’s why you’ve started this journey. But getting your voice heard is another matter entirely. Making great content is key on YT but so is figuring out how Google takes the information you provide and ranks your videos. I can’t go into the real nitty gritty of the subject in a single blog post (comment below if you want to see some deep dives), there are entire books dedicated to it. But I will cover some of the broader things you will need to look at.

First up is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). This stuff like snappy titles, quality descriptions, proper keyword phrase tagging and a myriad of other tweaks you can make. Spend more time watching content about SEO than you do on any other subject if you want to take YT seriously. Channels like Nick Nimmin, Video Creators & Video Influencers really helped me get a good foundation in this knowledge and I’m still learning and tweaking today.

The next big metric YT looks at is your Click Through Rate. This is essentially how many times your video thumbnail is shown to users vs how many times it’s clicked. Simply put, the more people click on your video (and watch it through) the more likely it is to be shown to more people. Make your thumbnail stand out and avoid clickbait unless the content is relevant. Use whatever software you can get your hands on, but put some effort into your thumbnails, they’re critical to reaching new audiences.

The last thing I want to touch on is Watch Time. In analytics, this is viewed as ‘Watch Minutes’ which might make you think that longer videos are better. But equally important is the ‘Audience Retention’ metric. This shows you when people bail from your video. A higher % is way more important that the actual minutes. Make content that is exactly as long as it needs to be to get your point across. Don’t add filler or pad it out to get longer videos, people will just click off.

Spend some good time going through your analytics on a regular basis. And not just on the Creator Studio App (get that by the way). The CS on browser is very powerful and you should take great care to learn everything it can do.

Don’t mooch for shout outs

This is sometimes called Shout-For-Shout (sfs) or something similar. And it’s generally frowned upon in most content creation circles. Getting a leg up via a larger channel is great, but that sort thing needs to be earned and not dished out. If the content you’re creating is great and you’re making yourself a valuable member of the community then you’ll get recognised and will earn those shout outs.

There are, however, ways to promote yourself in community friendly ways. Primarily, engage in the community. Comment on other channels in a meaningful and value added way. Become part of community groups on social media platforms, and don’t just spam your links everywhere.

At the beginning, it can feel like your channel isn’t getting the recognition it deserves and you may feel like you need to do something drastic to boost your number. Let it grow at its own pace. My first 100 took 35 weeks. After a year I had 300 subs. Its a slow burn that rewards the patient and the consistent.

Technical Advice

Anyone with a phone or camera can start YouTube. It’s the best part about it. There are ways you can make your content more polished though.

If you have the cash, getting great tech (cameras, mics, lights etc) is a great way to boost your appeal. BUT it’s not the be all and end all of content creation. In my opinion, if you have to choose, invest in audio first, then lighting then in video. I did the lions share of my videos on a 1080p webcam until I could afford a good camera and before that I used my phone.

Start learning the process of video editing as early as you can. Using the built in YT editor is great way to start but you’ll need to get more advanced to really create great content. I use Adobe CC but it’s expensive. Free stuff iMovies or DaVinci Resolve are a great way to learn how timelines work and start the learning process early. Start simply, bookending (cutting the intro and outro to remove stuff like starting the camera) and removing Umms, Arrrs, pauses and mistakes are an absolute must for most (but not all) types of video.

Try to work on your presentation skills and public speaking. Not easy right now sure, but try to say more things in your day job meetings or sign up to a public speaking course. As you get better at presenting and speaking, you’ll find that the job of editing gets easier and easier.

Be the brand you want to be from the start

Having a strong brand is a great way to stand out. If you’re aim is to be successful on YouTube, then act like you’re successful from the start. Get on top of your branding, have a consistent and meaningful message and be the professional you want to be. As mentioned in a previous point, its OK not to know exactly what your brand is at the start and it’s fine to move in a different direction as you go. But try to have some idea of your roadmap and where you want to realistically be in 6 months, a year, 5 years.

Branding doesn’t necessarily mean you need to have extravagant logos and banners etc (though they will help tie it all together). It really means having a recognisable presence and makes you look more professional. Having a snappy channel name is a great start.

Continual Improvement

Some of this article may have scared you off of starting YT. If that’s the case then I profusely apologise, it was not the intention. All of this stuff can be learned gradually as you go. Make it your goal to improve at least one aspect of your content with every video and make sure you revisit these improvements as your skill set grows. For example, look through my back catalogue of videos and you’ll see I’ve altered my style of thumbnail several times. I could go back and amend the old ones but I feel they chart the progression of my channel. The improvements don’t have to be huge either. Small, regular, incremental changes are better than stark step changes.

If you’re stagnating in your YT endeavours, have a good look through your channel and see what you can change. Some great places to start are the YouTube Academy. There are a ton of lessons and tutorials on there. Yes its a pain, but if you’re willing to put the time in, you’ll grow.

There are also a wealth of tutorials and such on YouTube proper. For example, I use Adobe CC but I’d never used it before. Thanks to some really great videos, I know know how to use Premiere Pro, Photoshop and Illustrator. Not knowing how to do something is not an excuse. Learn how.

Final thoughts

The big thing to remember about YouTube is that the vast majority of successful creators have been plugging away at their content for years. It’s nominally a slow burn endeavour. Sure, some channels go viral and gain overnight success, but repeating that can be incredibly difficult and 99% of those creators did not actually mean for that content to be viral, it was an accident when the spheres aligned.
Be consistent with your output and set a schedule that you can manage. If you have the enthusiasm to smash out the content, hold it back and drip feed it out on a regular basis.

Most of all though have fun. If making videos isn’t fun for you then you’ll have a hard time committing the time and energy needed to really make something of it.

I really hope this has been helpful to anyone just starting out, or maybe finding themselves stuck in a rut.
I’d welcome comments and feedback in the section below.