Hello and welcome to the latest episode of The Science of Social Media. My name is Phil Agnew and I'm a product marketer here at Buffer. First, some exciting news. You can now schedule content to YouTube using Buffer alongside, of course, all of you are of a favor of social networks. This is a brand new integration and we are pumped to Maven. I'll share a little more about that at the end of the episode but for now I wanted to share a fantastic interview my colleague Mike
did with the brilliant YouTube creator Paul O'Malley. Paul is a YouTuber who is dedicated to helping others get the most out of their tech, specifically tricky to use tools like Microsoft Teams, Excel and Mastered. On his YouTube channel he shares brilliant tips and tricks to his 32,000 subscribers. In preparation for our YouTube integration we got in touch with Paul and asked his advice for
creating YouTube content on the platform. Over this interview he shares his best tips for growth on YouTube, do's and don'ts on the platform plus advice for those just getting started. It's a great lesson so without further ado here's Mike asking what's encouraged Paul to start
creating content on YouTube. I mean that's that's kind of what I want to why I wanted to chat with you today was to talk a bit about YouTube so I guess kind of going back to the beginning of that I was curious like how did that how did that come about like did you make a conscious decision that you wanted to build a YouTube channel or was it just something
that kind of happened organically how did that happen? Kind of a little bit of both. I actually used to run a bit of a YouTube channel just over a decade ago now and then I kind of just was like cool this is stuff on the side forget about it and just didn't bother with it for a bunch of
years and over the last few years I've had a lot of roles in tech and stuff spend a few years working at Microsoft as well which was absolutely legendary but a lot of the time during then I had people going and saying to me like you're really good at explaining this stuff in a way I can understand
like do you want to create YouTube content like maybe you should do these videos online and I just always just kind of blow it off going yeah yeah cool maybe one day who knows and then until very recently my I was in a role where I was literally creating this sort of
video content sort of short bite sized clips just kind of a quick tip here a quick tip there and and so over the last year or so I've kind of really developed my skills in that regard drastic amounts compared to what I used to be able to do and so yeah in the last few months I
kind of was like you know what I'm sure other people could make use of this content as well and so I decided to start putting a few of the videos up on on YouTube and some of it started again traction including you know people such as yourself kind of noticing some of the content
that I was creating and you know putting it out on blast around around the social media spheres and things like that so and as a result it's it's drastically increased the reach that I could possibly have so and as a result I'm like YouTube's decided they want to stay hanging before it on
occasion so I might as well keep at it yeah and so the the monetization side of things that happened pretty recently right literally yeah literally in the last couple of weeks so it was a little bit of a process mostly just because from when I previously had monetization ages and ages and ages
ago it caused a little bit of a problem with my my AdSense account that YouTube require which made the process take a a few days longer than I expected but with a bit of help from YouTube support and an AdSense support on the back end we were able to get that resolved and so yeah for the last
few days or so at least YouTube's been throwing a few cents my way each day and you know I kind of look at it and go it's a bit of extra income on the side it's you know it's not life changing money by any stretch of the imagination but it's it's it's a nice little incentive to keep keep on creating
the content that I've been making so yeah yeah and I imagine good good validation as well to kind of just just keep going and yeah one step along the journey I suppose correct and did you I guess when you started making videos were there any other platforms you considered using or was it
was it always going to be YouTube I think it was always going to be YouTube I'm quite a quite a fan of tech in general and so like I like I'd considered other platforms and things like that but as much as as much as I would hate to say it the only real platform that would be able to give me the rich
I needed would be YouTube like Vimeo is great but it's more of a more of a business to business platform more than consumer platform and for those that have kind of started stretching out into the Fediverse with mastodon and things like that there's P.A.T.U. which is out there as well and I'd
considered that as well but but yet again the just the sheer reach like there's there's no way I would have over 30,000 people following me on P.A.T.U. in the span of a in span of four or five months whereas I do now on YouTube so yeah that's pretty so it's been you've managed to gather 30
years thousand followers in the space of what less than six months yeah yeah I had a like I had a lot of help in that regard mostly because like yeah I had some you know constant growth from my own internal networks and things like that and from my previous roles there were people who kind of
knew the content I created but I was somewhat lucky to have one yourself and also I had a couple of program managers from Microsoft actually kind of like and retweet a couple of my tweets regarding some of the videos that I've made and you know when you when someone who has over a hundred
thousand subscribers themselves retweet something of yours it tends to have a nice flow on effect and and as a result of that I you know in a span of one week I had you know six or seven thousand people subscribe which like I'm looking at the numbers going what is going on here and and it was just
just absolutely mind boggling yeah yeah but it's but it's great to see it's great to see yeah yeah yeah that's fantastic um and I guess like well we'll talk a little bit about kind of growing your reach later on but kind of going back to that process of getting started with a channel and getting
started with content and stuff like that what how did you come up with like your initial ideas for videos and how did you kind of get into that flow of you know kind of creating regularly uh oh it's a bit of a tough one I kind of as far as the ideas for the videos that I have
I've always been a really really big fan of pushing the technology that I have to its absolute limits to basically save myself time so like I like I position my channel as quick tips to improve efficiency right and I know a lot of people will say improve productivity productivity is just one
measure I prefer efficiency um and like I mean heck I have a keyboard where I've reprogrammed keys to do macros and things like that I've got my mouse here with multiple buttons set to control different things to speed up my workflow just a little bit each time I'm like I'll look at it and go
if I could save myself 10 minutes a day that adds an extra work week at the end of the year right like like I could do an X I could do a heck of a lot with an extra week every year um and I'm sure a lot of other people could as well and so every time I find these little little hidden features or
little tips that kind of just help people's workflows just be a little bit a little bit more seamless um I like to share them out um like I've recently started playing around with uh Google Docs and and Google Sheets and things like that as well to kind of expand beyond just
the Microsoft sphere and um and I'll be honest in the last week or so I've gone down a rattle hole with using uh chat GPT inside Google Docs and things like that and just kind of and it's just it's just crazy to see what the technology can potentially do when you just know
that little shortcut to leverage it um and so hopefully hopefully I can show someone a tip that takes five minutes out of their day now but saves them five minutes every day from here until eternity um and I and I feel like that's kind of the I guess the guiding staffer you know is the tip worth
showing someone then if it improves their workflow then it's worth showing them yeah so it's on it like you're sort of scratching your own itch really like instead of think trying to think up okay what what are things people what are people going to be interested in they're like well
this is stuff that helps me so I'm just going to share that out and that sort of feels like a pretty nice sort of organic you know yeah I can bail the stuff that you can share honestly it could be something as simple as a keyboard shortcut that people don't know about um all the way through to
you know something completely crazy like like throwing in chat GPT and having chat GPT completely fill in lists and things for you right like there's really small things really big things it could even be um an accessibility feature um personally I don't I don't aside from the uh terrible eyesight
on occasion um I don't really have any major vision impairments but uh I know a lot of people who have color blindness and I know a lot of people do and so even though I don't use the color filters that are in windows I've seen the effect that people can have when when I turn it on for them and
then have them go oh my god what I you know and seeing that light bulb moment for them and you know showing them a feature that's been in windows for literally over half a decade but people don't even know exists um and so if it can have such a big impact for them it's like yeah I just
uh you can probably see the passion already um but like I love I love that light bulb moment um and having someone else go oh I could use that oh and and and just seeing the knock on effect for them that's that's really what what drives me um and has for years so um yeah it's good to see that
yeah that's awesome um I guess you know speaking of you know some videos might be just a small tip others maybe a bit more extensive like do you have a set length of video that you like to create or you know to any kind of guidelines that you use there yeah uh I try to keep the video as
short as possible um the thing that drives me insane when I go on to youtube looking for like a how to video is when the first three and a half minutes of someone going yo yo yo it's your boy don't forget to smash that like but yeah and I I hate that and then on top of it the only thing that
makes it worse is when there's just like some insane side trans music playing in the background and I'm like don't get me wrong love me some side trans on occasion but not when I'm trying to find out how to recall an email in outlook you know and like I'm just accidentally sent this email I need
to recall it now I can't spend three and a half minutes watching you talk about your channel um and so most of my videos are sub five minutes um like a quite a lot of them are actually less than three minutes long um like I think at the moment I think some of the like maybe the longest videos
I've got are maybe seven minutes and that's because there's something that's a little bit more in depth and requires a little bit more setup beforehand um but yeah I try to keep it brief to the point but also clear enough that someone can just follow along themselves and understand as I'm doing it
um there's things there's nothing I hate worse than when someone's kind of blasting through something going way too quick and then all of a sudden I'm like hang on how did you get from step four to step seven like what's going on in the middle there I like to
try to go through a step by step wherever I can make it as clear and concise as possible yeah yeah that makes sense I was um I got stuck going back and forth in a single video recently trying to figure out how to basically put together a pram um and I was there honestly I recognized
about half an hour on a four minute video just kind of go back and forth I mean the creator must have loved that it increases the watch time maybe that's a cheeky hack or something awesome um but uh yeah I mean we should also maybe jump into um I guess like technically
how you create your videos do you have a you know kind of anything in your toolkit that you rely on like kind of if you want to walk it through what that kind of process looks like and what tools you use I think that it could be interesting uh yeah well um obviously uh I definitely create all my
videos on windows I know a lot of video creators use Mac and things like that um I've grown up on windows since I was you know knee high to a grasshopper kind of thing um and so windows is what I know I have a dedicated uh 1080p monitor here um and the reason for that is actually because
of the videos that I broadcast are in 1080p and so I like being able to record a full screen and things like that and for the screen recording itself um I know there are a lot of features inside windows to do screen recording in fact I've made videos on a couple of them but uh I personally
use a program called Camtasia um Camtasia is honestly built from the ground up for the type of content that I created has dedicated screen recording features um but one of the one of the best things it does is it even though uh you'll see in my videos that I have the mouse highlighted so
you can always tell exactly where it is I have red rings that pop up whenever I left click on anything yellow rings whenever I right click obviously windows doesn't do that natively um and so Camtasia is actually recording my mouse movements and clicks and things like that so that I
can then show those later on um it also makes it substantially easier for me to be able to zoom in on areas and things like that um it's unfortunately not free software uh it does cost a little bit of money but the benefit is that like you can do I it's better up my workflow miles um and generally
speaking I'll do my screen recording I'll try and have kind of a I guess like a storyboard created as and no okay I know I'm gonna do this so I'm gonna talk about going to here and I'm gonna go to this and then I'm gonna do this and then I'll do the screen recording generally in a single hit um
but then I'll go through and I'll do my editing zooming in highlighting squaring off things so that people can see everything in the screen as I'm doing it um and then once I've kind of got the base template down uh that's when I go into the audio recording side of things um so I know a lot
of people who create this content online will actually try and do the talking through as they're doing the screen recording in as well and Camtasia does have that capability um but personally I use audacity to do the audio recording afterwards so once I've got my template I just literally play it
back and record and do my voiceover whilst I'm watching the recording playback and the benefit for that there is that audacity has the ability to record at a higher bit rate or a higher clarity level of audio compared to what Camtasia can do um it's honestly something that almost nobody will notice
uh the difference but I'm also a little bit of an audio file uh on the side so uh I can pick up those things like I mean I've I've put sound proof on the sound dampening on a couple of the walls in here I've got big heavy drapes here to deaden the sound to make sure that everything is nice
and crisp and clean um obviously I want to make sure that when people are watching the videos later on I want them to be able to understand what I can say what I'm actually saying so after I've done the audio recording um there is a little bit of a process with removing the little lip smacks
and things like that out of the audio getting rid of any of the the sort of the background noise and the site really muting out any of the silences and things like that once all of that's done it's a matter of exporting it um but then um it's a little bit more of an in-depth process which is the
uh subtitles um so I know YouTube has automatic subtitling capability and it's okay um it's it's not super accurate especially when when it misunderstands Microsoft Excel and puts Microsoft Excel was in extra large um you know thank you me wrong Excel is great but I don't think it's extra
large um and so yeah I will usually uh use uh funnily enough I actually use the Google voice recorder app on my phone um and for those who happen to have a pixel phone it is really accurate um and so I'll use that get the transcript from there now it sounds kind of weird but take that transcript
put it into Microsoft Word um and then use Microsoft Word to give it a proofread over make sure the grammar is everything is correct um and then when I'm uploading the video to YouTube just literally copy and paste the text in and google is smart enough like YouTube is smart enough
to be able to sync the voice up and it does it extremely accurately um and basically from there it's just a matter of just touching up a couple of things here and there to make sure the subtitles flow well um and then the only other tool that I really use uh is Figma um so I've got like templates
that I use for all of my thumbnails um I know a lot of people on YouTube these days have like the you know looks on their faces and all that sort of stuff and just and it just annoys the crap out of me um so personally I've just I've just kind of got a very basic template got the logo of whatever
product it is that I'm showcasing in the video and then maybe three or four words beside it as to kind of a headline of what it is the videos about um it's super easy for me to make those that takes seconds um and then yeah just get it all uploaded to YouTube put it in the queue and
get it to post on a semi-regular basis which is good to see so I've got the microphone is that an expensive piece of kit or something homemade a little bit of columbate a little bit of columbate so the microphone I use isn't super expensive it's actually quite low end in its range
it's the Scarlett 2i2 it's from a company called Focusrite um it is an XLR microphone which allows it to be just gathered the sound quality is much better um then compared to like a USB Michael something like that um generally speaking though XLR mics will be quite expensive um this
particular set up retails for around about 500 Australian dollars um for the microphone and the audio interface that I have hidden behind my monitor here um I got really lucky and a guy on Gumtree was selling it an unwanted Christmas gift was selling it for 250 bucks so I was like I will take that
off your hands thank you very much um would I prefer a better quality microphone I would love one um obviously but I've got this set up and I've I picked up a a little shield here which basically helps prevent reverb and things like that on from around the walls and stuff um
I didn't spend a huge amount of money on it but obviously you can you can really spend a lot of money if you try yeah yeah well I mean it seems like it's doing the job so I guess that's the most important thing yeah um we're moving on to I guess less about the creation of the content
and more on the distribution of the content um we talked a little bit about how you know the last six months you've had a bit of help with with your growth in subscribers I guess from sort of influences in your space kind of you know whatever it is tweeting out or posting out some links to
your videos um was there a sort of an inflection point where you know you were sort of maybe growing slowly and then all of a sudden it's like okay here we go we're on to something now yeah I mean obviously having people with six figure follow accounts retweet my stuff was kind of really that
inflection point um but there was there was steps that I kind of took based on the analytics that I was getting from YouTube um which kind of sounds kind of nerdy to be looking at the data from that perspective I guess but I was finding that um obviously yeah I'm in Sydney so um Australian
time zones are not always the best depending on where your audience is um and so I was looking at the analytics from YouTube around when it is that people are watching my videos the most um and a lot of the time I was asleep or being perfectly honest sitting on the couch playing Halo um so at that
point it was it was a matter for me of going okay well I need to figure out how am I going to get the most traction um personally I don't use Twitter a lot myself uh anymore I'm more on mastered on than anything else in that respect um but given that there's no algorithm there
it's it's a very much a matter of being able to find your audience at the right time um and so only enough that was that was where buffer came in um trying to schedule a post for master on was quite cumbersome and very limited in functionality until buffer came along to kind of offer that
um and so first thing idea was go oh heck yes this is amazing um because I'd already been using it for Twitter I'd been using it for LinkedIn um you know back years ago when I was still using Facebook pretty regularly I was using it for Facebook as well um and so being able to kind of
schedule my posts on master on and Twitter to go out at times when I knew I was going to be able to get some traction based on the people that were following me um that that kind of really helped because I used to post something on master on around lunchtime for me and whilst that's great it's
the middle of the night for Europe and it was just kind of like I I was getting maybe four or five people you know boosting my posts or something like that or getting a few likes here and there but then when I was able to start posting the full content that I wanted at the time that worked
best for my audience um that started to go and see hey you know what now that post that used to get maybe 20 20 reposts you know and stuff like that is now getting two and a half thousand it was just kind of like okay I should probably keep doing this um and so yeah and I'd seen a bunch of people
on master on that were in a similar boat to me going you know scheduling a post is something that people who work in in social really need to be able to do um and so that was when I decided to funnily enough make a quick video on how to use it um and yeah it got a bit of traction with that
as well so there it was usually those sorts of points I wouldn't I wouldn't say that there was kind of any one big tip it was like hey look you know you have to do this to get all your subscribers that's like no it's it's it's a very much an incremental thing and it's using the data you have
available to be able to be as efficient as possible you know um I hate spending time doing Monday work that I don't need to do and you know being able to schedule those things so that I didn't have to make sure I was online at the right time to post um just saves me time and effort yeah and so
is it social media is your sort of main distribution channels for you to do is any other ways that you get I guess links to your videos out there um or is it was it mainly social it's it's mostly social I think um like I found that obviously yeah I post and some people would
retweet and like it um I have friends and family who are really nice and then spam it on all of their friends um but uh basically I'm kind of finding now that I'm fun funnily enough when I left my previous role where I was creating this content for internal use and things like that and now
I'm creating it public facing um a lot of the people who I didn't know were really getting a lot of benefit from the content internally have now started reaching out to me connecting with me via LinkedIn and things like that and they've been resharing my content amongst their teams internally um
and so it's kind of uh it's it's it's kind of really nice to see the network aspect of social networking um really coming to play there like I I've I've suddenly grown followers and users from a random educational district in Texas um all because one person who by used to work with
loved a couple of my videos um and started sharing them out with some of their colleagues and so as a result it just kind of started spreading and now I've got a little bit of a following amongst educators in Texas uh yeah yeah and it's it's it's very much that network base um
from the social side of things that really helped yeah yeah I guess the I mean having that sort of organic word of mouth I think is something that yeah everyone kind of wants to achieve in terms of trying to get their their content out there so uh 100% do you could you say
there's anything that's has contributed to that organic word of mouth I mean obviously the contents good I'd say that's probably the main thing uh is there anything else I'd say probably mostly the the content um I I my wife will say that this is a downside um
I I will not um I I like to help where I can um which sounds very self-serving to say it like that but hear me out um I quite a few of the videos that I will post um on youtube and that in the comments someone will go hey like you know this this is a thing I like mine isn't quite working
like this I'm seeing this instead and whilst I know that I can't physically go and look at that person's computer and if I could look at their computer I could probably fix their problem in 20 seconds right like I'm pretty technical in that that sort of background area I guess I used to
do tech support for a living um but even though I'm not there I still kind of like to help um I randomly get tagged by people on mastodon going hey I you know I'm not sure who can help you hear but Paul might know how to do it and and the fact that like people are kind of understanding
me as that sort of an avenue for help as well um like I've actually gotten some pretty cool video ideas as a result of people asking me questions going hey look I'd love to know how can I do this better you know and then I go and look up the answer because if someone's asked me that question I can't
stop thinking until I figure it out um and as a result you know it can potentially help me but on the flip side I can help them um and so as a result now those you know there's been some people who didn't know about me but then got referred to me for support or help I've been able
to find an answer for them and now as a result that person is now following me and you know looked at some of my previous content and it just really knocks on from there so I'd I'd like to say that a willingness to help where I can kind of really did help drive the growth as well yeah well I mean
that sounds even if your wife disagrees that it's a not always a good thing but I mean to me it sounds I mean a lot better than trying you know the sort of the typical hacks you know you sort of mention like okay you've got to have your you know your cover screen has to be like your face
looking like it is so and yeah you know the kind of flashy transitions and stuff like that I'm guessing here you you sort of avoid that approach altogether I wouldn't necessarily recommend it yeah I look I I'm sure that I'm sure that those lovely little tips and things like that do work for some
um I will I will 100% tell people if someone then reaches out over wanting your social media posts and ask you to like sign up to one of those websites to like you know buy subscribers and stuff do not do it right like one it's probably a scam and doesn't work anyway and two even if it did
work it's against YouTube's terms of service um but like I had to I had to block a few people that kept reaching out to me every time I posted a YouTube video um initially because they were like oh I see you've only got 400 subscribers would you like some more um and I'm like no no no look I'm
doing fine right yeah it's fine um I I've seen a lot of the sort of you know this one simple tip will help you get all your all your view time and all this sort of stuff and I I personally didn't expect the boosting growth that I got right like there were there was very much some sort of the
knock on effect from other people sharing and things like that as well plus as a result people seeing previous content of mine are going oh hey the content's actually not bad um that was kind of the biggest biggest I guess tip for me is just make content that is valuable to people
if you can try and be consistent right like people follow or people subscribe to channels when they know what they're going to get right like like the the YouTube channels that I subscribe to is it's it's kind of like cool I know that when I follow abroad in Japan I'm going to get some
great travelogue style videos of Japan you know I'm very much a fan of Japan um all right yeah I those are the sorts of things that I find so if you're the sort of person that goes and posts a video about this and then a video about something completely different and then a video
about something completely different people are less likely to subscribe um but all I can really say is be consistent you know post regularly if you can I like try not to post 25 videos in a week and then nothing for six months right like I I personally schedule my posts um not just my
social posts but also my YouTube posts um so at the moment uh I've got a bit of spare time and so I've been creating a lot of extra videos um and I've currently got them scheduled so I've got a video going out every four days from now until currently the end well now the beginning of May um
so quite yeah for those watching this later on uh basically I've got about six or seven weeks worth of videos already lined up ready to go um that's something that's probably a better tip for being able to sort of grow your channel is being consistent um yeah that's that's probably the
biggest one for me at least it's what I found works for me so yeah it makes sense any pitfalls or traps for aspiring creators to avoid don't overdo it um right like I've had a I've had a a lot of people tell me oh man you should like you know do maybe you do like phone reviews and
stuff like I'm a massive phone nerd I change my phone way too often all right my my telco loves me uh because I'll change phones whenever a new phone comes out but but creating mobile phone reviews or something like that is something I could do right but then I would go into the realm of
needing to record you know actual face face video and things like that as opposed to just a screen recording right a screen recording is easy enough for me to do um adding my own video feed into it then adds in exponentially greater difficulty levels as far as editing and things like that and
transitions is concerned um maybe that's something for the future but what I have now is working and it's working well and so I will stick to that um I'm also not trying to you know overload myself with doing creating too many videos right like uh at the moment I'm kind of going you know
what I've got a regular cadence going um pushing yourself to go too hard is definitely one way to just burn yourself out and go yeah cool it's not worth worrying about it anymore um and then lastly monetization is a hard thing to get to uh the requirements have greatly increased um I was very lucky
that I I've been able to reach that status um what I would probably say is that once you get to that status it's definitely yeah as I mentioned earlier it's it's not life changing money um but it's it's
kind of it's it's it's the phrase I like to use is it's extra money is nice money to have right so it's something that comes along way at the moment I'll be brutally honest I've made about 10 bucks woohoo um but as as the channel continues to grow and the back catalog of videos continues to expand
that passive source of income will grow as well um so I know a lot of people who get to monetization and then go oh but I'm not really making that much yeah you know stick at it keep growing um and then as as you continue to grow that source of revenue will continue to grow as well so that is the
interview report I really enjoyed that it was brilliant to hear how Paul uses YouTube how it's helped him grow and reach his audience and how he's engaged 30 000 followers if you're keen to follow and pause footsteps and start growing on YouTube yourself then why not check out buffers
latest integration with YouTube it's available now on all buffer plans including our through plan and it's the easiest way to post at optimal times to reach more people on YouTube you will have heard Paul in that interview talking about how he needed to post at the optimal time especially
because he was on that Aussie time zone and buffer can help you schedule content to go out right when it's needed you can also save your content ideas for later plan all of your posts in a calendar view and and see when you're posting on other social networks as well you can preview your
content before you schedule it and of course schedule at a preferred time it's the perfect companion for getting started on YouTube plus buffer helps you publish to this platform without having to become an expert on YouTube so why not get started with buffer for YouTube at buffer.com forward
slash YouTube that's buffer.com forward slash YouTube or simply head to buffer.com and click YouTube in the menu all right that is all for today we hope you found this episode informative and helpful don't forget to follow us on our own YouTube channel you can find us on YouTube by searching for
buffer and as always if you enjoyed today's episode we'd really appreciate a review on Spotify Apple or wherever you get your podcasts so good luck as you start creating and scheduling your YouTube content and thank you so much for listening.