Good morning!
I published a video on my travel channel this week that had nothing to do with travel.
Featured Video
It’s a 3-minute long video about how getting the right piece of gear can remove enough friction to make creating easy and fun again. Or more easy and fun.
You’re supposed to make every YouTube video for the same viewer, right?
What happens when you have a travel vlog channel but you don’t have any trips planned?
Is it better to publish something unrelated or not publish at all?
I’ve been thinking a lot about this, so I ran an experiment. I published the above video about a camera and removing friction from the creative process… on my travel channel.
This goes against typical YouTube advice, which says you should keep your topics laser focused on a specific audience. Meaning every video on your channel should speak to the same person, use a familiar format, and have a similar promise or transformation.
But there’s another piece of YouTube advice that’s just as important: experimentation.
Publishing this video serves three purposes:
It keeps my channel alive by posting a video in a somewhat familiar format (we still go out into the world and vlog about it).
It lets me experiment with breaking parts of that format to see how people react to it. It was a direct opportunity to do a bit more filmmaking storytelling with insert shots, sound design, and stuff that I haven’t figured out how to incorporate into my travel vlogs yet.
It let me have fun by making content even when I didn’t have any trips coming up. I didn’t want to wait until September to make another video because it’s boring, you know?
All three of these are important. But this type of experimentation isn’t all great all the time. Let’s talk about the cons.
Lower metrics from my existing audience. I have a couple hundred people who watch my travel videos. Most of them will probably not watch this one. My click-through rate and watch time will both underperform with them.
I mitigate this by letting YouTube show the video to new viewers through a search-based strategy. This is why the packaging is about the camera, not traveling to a tea shop (which happens in the video.)An off-topic video in my feed may confuse channel visitors. Are they seeing a travel channel or a vlog channel?
This is mitigated by keeping all the branding about travel, and then using the home page feature and playlists to separate off-topic videos from flagship travel videos.
So with all this in mind, is it okay to post off-topic content on your channel? Sometimes. But you have to do it with intention. Plan for how you’ll present it. Plan for how people will perceive it. And be ready for it to perform differently.
But experimentation is good, in my opinion. And you should try it too!
New latter art at Milo’s Cafe this morning. I thought it was cool.
If you have questions about YouTube or video production for your business, book a call with me :)
Talk soon,
– Matias