What YouTube Wants (for agents)

Simply put, YouTube wants three things: Viewership, Engagement, Consistency.

Step 1: Create quality videos that provide value to your ideal client.

Step 2: Repeat Step 1!

Viewership

YouTube wants as much watch time as possible on the platform - they naturally want to keep their viewers there! The more valuable a video is to the watcher, the longer they will watch and the more likely they are to watch more videos.

Actionable takeaways for agents:

• Deliver the value. Give the viewer what the value they came to see! The video needs to deliver on what the title, keywords, and thumbnail say.
• Get to the point and cut out the fluff. Viewers don’t want long pauses or intros, they want as much value as possible as quickly as possible. Luckily, new AI editing tools we will discuss can help us do this easily.
• High quality audio and HD video is a must in today’s world for a viewer to want to watch. This does not require an expensive setup, but a crappy laptop webcam won’t cut it.
• Enhance the video with related image and video overlays, we call this “B roll”, animations, and other cinematic features. Or when it makes sense, use a presentation and screenshare video - and for these, ensure your beautiful face is still on the screen!

Engagement

Besides consuming more video viewers can tell YouTube how much they liked a video with likes, subscribes, comments, and alerts. By getting more likes and subscribes from a video, YouTube will know you delivered and rank the video higher in search results, creating more traffic.

Actionable takeaways for agents:

• Deliver the value. Nothing is going to get you more likes and subscribes than delivering exactly what that viewer wants to see!
• Ask the viewer to like and subscribe. This can be done near the start, somewhere in the middle, and at the end. It can feel natural, where when you’re introducing yourself and channel, simply let the viewer know that if they subscribe they’ll get more great local content! I usually only use an animation for asking in the middle, and then I verbally ask again at the end.
• Ask a Question. Asking the viewer to comment below to answer a question or give their opinion, is a great way to spike engagement. If you talk about the top neighborhoods in an area, you could ask “what do you think? did I miss any? Which is your favorite?”
• Local content. A viewer is more likely to subscribe if they’re getting more than just real estate content, like local business and event showcases.

Consistency

This is by far the MOST important factor! The BIGGEST mistake agents make on YouTube is simply not doing enough on a consistent basis. Two videos a week as a minimum should be the goal. You can film 8 in a day and be done for the month! But YouTube loves consistent creators and so does your audience. The more related content you have, the more searchable you are and more views you’ll receive.