Most YouTuber Advice is Bad (Tier List)

There's a ton of YouTube advice on the internet, and unless you're sifting through it every single day, it's hard to distinguish the gold from the garbage. Fortunately, as a day job, that's exactly what I do. I'm the head of content strategy for a company called Say, and I give advice to a bunch of authors on this shelf behind me, including people like Mark Manson, Cody Sanchez, Daniel Pink, and Jesse Ezzler. My co-host, Alina, she and I actually met each other while working for Mark Manson, and in this episode, we are going to be ranking our favorite and least favorite creator advice. Ready. I'm ready. All project management should live in one tool. I don't think so. Yeah, I love notion, but it's not like universally applicable. I mean, there usually is a notion solution for the problems that I have, and it's my own laziness that tries to keep conversations in Slack or something like that. But realistically, if everything were a notion, it would be a lot easier to keep track of things. What would you rank this? Okay, I think I would put this in A tier, because I just don't like how it says all. Yeah. Keep a swipe file at the top for forming hooks, thumbnails, and titles. What's a swipe file? That's like when you're looking for examples of things you like, like YouTube thumbnails, for example, is what I see as like a mood board. Yeah, I guess so. It's just like a file with like screenshots of like thumbnails and titles. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a great idea. I saw Sam Godet put out an Instagram reel that talked about this exact thing, where anytime he sees something interesting, even if he doesn't have a use for the thumbnail screenshot, put it in a dock, you know, revisit it down the line. It's great advice. I'm going to list it as A tier. Use YouTube's AV thumbnail testing feature. Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, there is an exception, and that is if you have less than say 10,000 subscribers, your energy is better served elsewhere. But once this is like the real deal, you're bringing in a little bit of money. This is a great place to reinvest in yourself, you know, find a thumbnail designer, have somebody make multiple options because you come up with a thumbnail idea and you put it online, and you do it as a split test. The one that you think's going to win really does not win that often. At least that's in my experience. Like 50% of the time, it's actually a different thumbnail, which is crazy to me. You talk about another tool you use that has better like CTR calculations versus AVD calculations. So the rule of thumb is when you're split testing with YouTube studio, you want to test different concepts, three of them showing different ideas as a way to like draw people into the video. Once you've got your winning thumbnail from that three or if you've got four or five and you've been testing them all to find out which concept is the winning concept. I like to go into TubeBuddy and start making finesses to that winning thumbnail. And this is where I go and I change the shirt color or maybe if there's two or three words of text, I'll switch up the words of text. I do it on TubeBuddy instead of YouTube studio. And it's a bit of a hot take. But the reason I do is because YouTube studio measures for average watch time, average watch duration. And TubeBuddy measures for CTR, click through rate. And if you're changing somebody's shirt from blue to red, nobody's going to watch the video for longer because it's a red shirt versus a blue shirt. But if they might click versus not click if the image doesn't stand out to them. A tier advice, B tier advice. Dare I say S tier? Everyone should use it. Yeah. Except for we we always have inconclusive tests because we don't have enough views. So that's if you have under 10,000 followers or subscribers, it's not worth your time. Like spend your time. So it's not S tier. It's it's not okay. I can do eights here. Let's do eights here. Eight here. Yeah. Okay. All client feedback on edits should happen asynchronously. I think that's not good advice. This industry is not localized in the same way that Hollywood or working in New York City is. So sometimes you don't have the opportunity to do feedback together. But it's just better almost every single time. Like anytime I'm working with somebody and I'm in person, the flow state that we get into, the level of productivity that we have, the alignment we get on edits and on the project. It's just significantly better than if you're doing it virtually or asynchronously. I agree. I feel like I love doing deep work on my own. Like if I were an editor, which I'm not, I would probably like to edit on my own. But the feedback part I think helps when you're just like right there next to each other. Because even like explaining what you mean as you're giving feedback on an edit could take way longer than just like pointing at something and saying like, "Change this." I completely agree. There's a funny feeling you get as a video editor. I was a video editor for like four or five years and when the client or the person that you work for is sitting right over your shoulder and reviewing the video with you, it suddenly unlocks this realization of what parts of your video truly suck. Like you can't see that until you watch somebody else watch it and you're like, "Oh God, what have I done?" But it happens every single time. So bad advice. Yeah, bad advice. I say D or F tier. Send your clients a weekly analytics report. So this is for people who work with an agency. Like I think that's not super applicable to a lot of people in this industry. I work for an agency and we don't send them a weekly analytics report. It's more of a monthly analytics report. I think a lot of the clients that we work with don't have a solid grasp on what is good and what is bad. So this is mediocre advice. I think time is better spent improving your video ideas, executing on scripts better. It's good to check in with the people you work with, but they could do it without. I also feel like in some cases, you don't need a full analytics report. It's kind of just like, if there's like a big chunk of something that's missing from your videos or your content in general, you don't need a whole analytics report to show that. The better advice is actually to teach your clients how YouTube Studio works on a very basic level because in my opinion, it's like a drug. When you start to upload content and you see it performing well, you just want to keep checking it and see if the performance is continuing or if it flattens off and then same is on the other side, it gets really depressing when you get like a 10 out of 10 or a 9 out of 10. So if you spend the extra time just kind of teaching the foundations to people who aren't really familiar with social media, that allows them to go do it on their own. Maybe you check in with them with the analytics report monthly or quarterly or whatever else, but let them have the fun. Then you can focus on making the scripts better or making the video ideas better because that's where the impact is really going to, you know, 10x your performance in the future. What if you had AI make a report? Yeah, it's a great idea. Set it up once, let it do its thing. I think with client work, a lot of the time, you just want to like show that you're competent, that you're putting in effort, so this could be a good way to do that. Even if they don't check it, just that it exists and that shows up on their desk every Monday. I say seats here, not a needle mover for me. Get your audience onto a newsletter. This is exceptionally important for educational creators for entertainment creators less applicable, but what I will say is this is where you truly own your audience, whereas with YouTube and Instagram, you know, you own your audience through those platforms and if they change or if they don't like you, you potentially lose that audience. The other nice thing with newsletters is the money that comes in is probably like you're probably getting the largest pile of the pie, largest slice of the pie, and you don't have to divide it up with anybody like with ad sense, you're obviously splitting it with YouTube, but if you get like, you know, some kind of brand deal, you're going to claim almost all of it unless you work with a creator agent. This is a tier advice. The only reason it's not a tier advice is because I'm not sure how it applies to entertainment-based creators doesn't seem like it's in Mr. B's best interest to get everybody onto a newsletter. I mean, maybe it is his best interest. It's just harder to convert them. Yeah. Use data to write your titles. Oh, this one. I have a spicy opinion for this one. Up until very recently, I would say use data to write your titles because outlier theory has been such an important thing for the past two years. This tool one of 10 has made it really easy for you to find what titles exist and are working out on YouTube also internally in your own content. I think 2026 is the year that we fade away from outlier theory and we start to look and create, look for and crave more original content. I just had an original title that I did for a client and it became a one out of 10 and it did not use any data. It was just a hunch on what people clicked on. So right now, this very moment in time, my opinion is different than what it has been for the last two years. The skill of 2026 in my opinion is taste. The skill of 2025 and 2024, especially in educational content, was data. I think taste is the skill of the year. Okay. How do you improve your taste? That's a great question. Is it something you're born with? I don't know. Is it something that you spend a lot of time and hone and craft over time? I do think so. When I was growing up, I watched a ton of movies. I used to buy every DVD that was out there. I'd watch the movie. I'd watch the movie with the director's commentary. I'd watch all the behind-the-scenes features. That's something we've lost with streaming. And that really helped me hone my taste and refine what I really liked. I also used to read scripts. I would watch a movie and I would have the script in my hand and I would follow along because in between all the dialogue, there's like descriptions on what is happening in the scene. So to be able to read that and then see what was happening on screen to see how they interpreted that, I think that really helped me hone my taste. And also realizing that there's no right answer. It is subjective whether or not to film something on a tripod versus handheld. They give you two different feelings and neither is right or wrong. You just have to own the choice that you make. It's something that I think you refine over time. And I think we're getting oversaturated on people using the same titling mechanisms that everybody's been preaching for the last two years. I'm ready for some original content. Some under-optimized stuff. So see here. I'm like people will kill me if I say teeteer. I'll lose my job. I'm going to say bt Okay, for the sake of death and job Why do matters more than video quality S tier kind of crazy. Here's so I've had this argument before if you Can't hear something or if you struggle to hear it. It's not a good experience But if you can't see something or you struggle to see it It's not as detrimental of an experience and the go-to example that I always point to is Blair Witch project was a movie from I think like 1999 it was filmed on a handicap the audio quality is great But part of the experience of watching that film is the shakiness of the camera, you know I think paranormal activity was another horror film from like 2011 to 2012 very similar video quality was terrible But the audio quality was good and then my third example is a movie called Cloverfield Which was filmed entirely handheld exact same experience if you were to flip the script and have something Deceptionally cinematic for any of those three movies, but the audio quality was terrible people would get up And they would leave the theater because you can't hear what's going on You can't understand and after getting confused for a few minutes even in a movie theater environment You won't even know what you're watching. It's not there's no sense of being there. I feel like our audio listeners Would probably agree with you Yeah, that's true. That's true. We're making a very visual episode and Huge post portion of the the audience for this will be audio when I was in film school Somebody told me that the audio quality is worth three units and the video quality is worth two units So both are important, but audio is more important So I'm sticking with this being an exceptional piece of advice Okay, I agree Get to the value as fast as possible. This is exceptional advice You really don't want to linger too much and this is in a year where People are more open to slower-paced content. We don't have to bestify everything but Value does need to exist throughout the video. We can't linger on Moments where I don't know your building character or you're Describing something in extreme amount of detail if you watch the movie the second avatar a lot of the critiques was That it just spent a lot of scenes doing nothing and you really cannot do that especially on YouTube where people are encouraged from the platform itself to click on videos Like while they're watching the video. There's other videos. They're gonna click on it the second they get bored So you need to get to the value as fast as possible. This is great advice Is there ever a time where you wouldn't get to value as fast as possible? I mean, there's like movies or videos that describe a feeling and it doesn't really have story But like linear story progression and so the question is like what is the value in that environment? Like value is kind of subjective like you have to think like what did people click on this video for if they clicked for lessons The value is lessons if they click for entertainment a very particular kind of entertainment like ranking hotels The value is the scoring of the hotel or the process of scoring the hotel So you do need to get to that value as quickly as possible. Okay, that's here 80% good enough is good enough to publish great advice The bulk of the value that you create in this video is going to be done in first 80% of the effort everything beyond that has diminishing returns you can finesse it and get it to 90% good or 100% good But it's at the cost of being more frequent with your uploads and on social media people may disagree with me YouTube may suggest otherwise itself But hitting frequent uploads is an important role in success if you want to make every video just in our project and do one a year There are people who do it and have success doing it, but the likelihood of you having success is higher when you accept that 80% good is good enough I'm a perfectionist so it makes it hard to put it in S, but I I will accept a But but I think it's very good advice. I hear you say all the time that like once they make it past like a certain number of minutes Or like halfway through the video or something like that They're probably going to watch the whole thing anyway So if you don't have to spend that much time on it when I'm editing something or when I'm speaking with An editor I always encourage the editor to front load their energy because if you look at a retention chart You're going to lose you know 30 to 60% of the people who are watching your video in the first minute anyway And so if you spend more energy working on those, you know You're going to raise that and it's going to have a ripple effect over the course of the video for bad videos and great videos By the time you get to like the 50% mark in the video people are likely going to finish it I think as humans it's it's human nature to, you know, be completionists and to want to finish what we started and if you can get Someone past the 50% mark the likelihood of them leaving is much much lower flad in that curve as quickly as possible We lead your old and underperforming videos. I mean if you're really embarrassed by them I'm not going to say don't do it But one thing that's cool about social media particularly with YouTube is when you do something great It has the potential to be seen by millions when you do something terrible It's not the opposite of that, you know people don't watch it and throw tomatoes at your house and boo and hiss at you They just don't see it or they ignore it and then they forget about it You know people are really just remembered for their best work and Everybody puts out garbage content at some point and nobody remembers it Um, so I would I would say this isn't like bad advice Maybe it's a little bit damaging in that like you might be your own worst critic. I agree So for me, this is like D or C tier if you look at the top podcast to the top 100 podcasts in America One percent of them have less than 400 or 500 episodes Like it really does take a number of reps to become Truly great at what you're doing and this goes back to the 80% good enough thing Most people who are watching and listening to this have not made a hundred videos on their own channel So get to that as quickly as possible. That's advice from Mr. Beast and Patty Galloway get to 100 videos as quickly as possible A lot of people this is a quote from Mr. Beast. He's like people ask me for a coffee so that I can get it Give them advice or something like that and he says just get to 100 videos as quickly as possible because Once you get there, you're not going to need to ask Mr. Beast for coffee because you're gonna have a figured out by that point But until you get there your content's just not gonna be good enough There's too much of a learning curve Alex Hermosi calls it the ignorance tax like you don't know what you don't know So just focus on getting one percent better every single video once you get a hundred videos under your belt You're going to be great open your video by stating the date. Oh, I love this one This is advice that like I give to everybody. It's a little bit of a hot take But I think it's only a hot take because people don't know about it But here's why this is great advice if you are recounting a story This is probably best for educational content not so much for entertainment content But if you're recounting a story the best way to do it on YouTube because YouTube's a visual medium is to tell it in Present tense instead of past tense and if you start with a date from a writing perspective It immediately immerses you in that moment and you can progress the story mentally as you're writing it through because you've started with the date It's like what happens? Okay. What next happens? What happens next? But then when people go to view it humans are like very tuned in to how stories work Even if they don't completely understand you know three-act structure the hero's journey that kind of stuff Like they kind of get what a good story is and what a bad story is and when you start with a date It immerses the viewer in the same way that it immerses the writer. So March 10th, 1989 Present tense it immerses the viewer in a way and I've seen this on the data as well If you look at Fern which I think is one of the greatest YouTube channels on the platform right now There are videos majority of the time start with the date If they don't explicitly say the date they have a graphic that that shows up in the first frame of the video that shows the date It just does a great job of immersing the viewer This is great advice. Does it apply to all channels? No Like why would Mr. Beast start with a date? So great advice, but not universally applicable That's a good assessment Let's say you are like an educational like storytelling type creator. Would you open all your videos like this? No, there are different openers right you should have like a little role at X of openers One is called start with the date and that's what we just described another one is time to value This one comes from patty galloway which says you know, you should basically restate the title in the first sentence The second sentence should indicate why you're worth listening to and then you just get into the value There's also an intro called the fortune teller intro which is basically you use a lot of use statements You want to be rich you want to be happy you want and then the viewer kind of like nods along Have like an arsenal of different intros and one of those intros should be starting with the date I have this fun little tactic that I use with many clients because I work in the authorship space and all And almost everyone that I work with has written a bunch of books many of which best-selling authors New York Times best-selling books starting with a date and like we're counting a story is the first part of the video It's not that common so people don't think to do it But whenever I'm working with an author I'll pull their book from my bookshelf and I'll read them the first page of their very own book And it literally starts with a date every single time like the value inside of a story book or sorry inside of a Instead of a book from you know like a self-help book or something like that You don't actually get to the knowledge to the value sharing until like page six or seven But in youtube, it's like oh you got to share value immediately and I think it to 2026 there's an opportunity to tell a compelling story and then derive the lesson from the story just like people do in books so Seats here okay seats here depending on who you are if you're an educational creator I would rank this higher if you're an entertainment creator rank this lower Sensor yourself with slang to avoid demonetization Not a strong opinion, but I will say that youtube has very firm rules on how early in the video you can swear Not exactly sure what it is right now, but it used to be Absolutely no swearing in the first seven seconds probably no swearing in the first 15 seconds I think they've softened it just a little bit You definitely don't want swear words in the thumbnails or in the titles if you do censor it like crazy. You know replacing it with slang is one tactic you don't absolutely have to do that, but yeah it's it's decent advice. Just follow what YouTube recommends. Maybe C tier? Well you need a documented voice or style guide for every creator you work with. Yeah I think this is important. It's really important to be aligned with the creator on what their graphics look like, what their font styles look like, what their color looks like, and I've worked both in educational and in entertainment on YouTube, and it applies to both. So I do think this is a good idea, especially if you're editing for somebody else or if you're producer for somebody else, or even if you're creator yourself, you do want to have some kind of like visual unity. This is something where like you need at least a bare minimum amount to start, and then you can get more and more detailed and have like a longer, better, more descriptive style guide or voice guide later on, but you need to start with something. So you're on the same page. If you're a creator that's working by yourself and you're below a hundred videos, I really don't think it matters that much. Like I think you should just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. You know, try this font, try this font, try these colors. Don't let the style guide get in the way of creating what is you know, ideally the best content. Okay. C, B. I'm leaning towards C. Okay. Lean into your outliers. Great advice. Figure out what's working for you and make more of it. Patty Galloway says a lot of people stop making what's working for them because they feel like a one trick pony and his suggestion is actually to continue to do it until there's evidence that it's not working anymore. You can usually squeeze a format, you know, one or two or three more videos out of a format. After you feel fatigued by it, the audience still has a little bit more energy for it. I feel like there are similarities to this of between this one and the used data to write your titles one. What is the difference between those? Because like in the used data to write your titles, it's kind of like what are the outliers and like use those to help make better titles. I think with the titles one, we're talking specifically about titles. And I think with this, we're talking more about types of content like formats. And I do think that there are a series of formats that work really well on each platform. And even though I am of the contrary and opinion that outlier theory is going by the wayside, I still think that formats will still dominate YouTube and Instagram and everything in 2026. If you look at linear television, most shows can be bucketed into like, I don't know, six to 10 different big categories, big genres. And I think that's still true on YouTube, even in a world where outlier theory isn't as potent as it used to be. I would rank this probably B tier as well, maybe A tier. B tier feels right because of the titles argument. I feel like it's slightly more applicable than used data to write your titles, but it's like the same underlying argument. Yeah, this could be like, if B plus was a was an option, maybe B plus. Yeah, between B and A. Never recap what was just shown or said. Fantastic advice. Repetition kills your video more than almost anything else out there. I think a lot of people will without even realizing it, you know, do something and then recap what they've just done. And it's so unnecessary. If the viewer truly needs a recap of something, they'll just skip back and watch that part of the video again. I see this a lot in scripts for educational content where, you know, they identify seven ways to be more productive and then they talk about a couple of them, and then they recap what everyone's just learned and, you know, it crushes the retention. So I should not recap what you just said. I would label this as S tier advice. Okay, wait, first pushback is you said between the title and the first line, you should recap what the title was. Does that still apply? I mean, there's certainly an argument. The no intro intro is a thing that exists on YouTube, where you use the title of the video as the intro and then you just get into the video. I do think there is a worthy argument called Confirm the Click, which is you want people to click on your packaging and then you want to indicate in the video that what they've clicked on is what they're getting. It's not clickbaited. And probably the most effective way to do that is by restating the title of the video in some capacity or at least visualizing it in some capacity inside the video itself. When I'm listening to a podcast that rambles a lot, it helps me a lot when like the host or someone else just gives a summary, or like sometimes it's too technical and I don't even know what they're talking about. So like that summary of like, so this is what you actually mean. And like in a very short, easy to digest summary of what was said, I find that helpful. When we're talking about podcasts though, I think that should be considered differently than YouTube videos. Like YouTube videos are highly curated. Every single second, every single word is selected and placed there with intention. But with podcasts, the audience is much more open to a slower flowing conversation. Not every sentence comes with a period at the end. Sometimes people will start a sentence. They'll pivot midway down the road. You know, that is stuff that the audience has become accustomed to. And when people give long-winded answers, it is fair for the host or somebody else to like break down that answer into more digestible, understandable sentences. But on YouTube, when people watch a YouTube video, they watch only up until the point where they get bored and they decide to leave. But on podcasts, you click a podcast, the likelihood of you going into it with the mentality of finishing it is significantly higher. A, B? Oh my god. S tier. This is so critical. It's such a killer of the pot of the retention. If there's anything people have learned from this particular episode, this is the silent killer. Everybody's out there making content and you don't realize it until it's too late. Oh shoot, I've already stated this. Oh shoot, I've already done something similar to this earlier in the video. Sure. If you're making a podcast, a little bit different rules. But for YouTube videos and, you know, shorts and reels, repetition is the biggest thing that will kill your retention. Repetition is how people learn. When you are trying to like sell something, you have to see it like a certain number of times before they buy it or be influenced or how does that play into this. Repetition across videos is okay. Like if you're an educational content creator, like Alex Hermosi. Hermosi actually says this. He says sometimes people need to be told something twice to fully understand it. And so you make a video about how to sell to whatever else and, you know, that's a great video. And then in another video, you have a similar video argument about selling stuff. That's different. But on YouTube, like within the confines of each individual video, we are always fighting against the audience's boredom or confusion. There are videos all around this video if you're watching it on YouTube right now. And if you get bored by this, even for just a second, you can click on those videos and watch something else. The biggest indicator of boredom, like the thing, like I've seen this in the data. If you repeat yourself too frequently, the viewer is going to be like, "Well, I already kind of know this skip." And then they're just going to move on to the next video. I'm convinced. Shouldn't light your videos into other languages? I don't have a big opinion on this. We've done it both manually and with YouTube's auto feature. It accounts to like one to two percent of success of like the video's performance in my experience. Perhaps if you are a foreign language channel, translating it to English will have higher degrees of success. But with my experience, I've just not seen it be very valuable. Fortunately, YouTube allows you to translate it into like 14 or 15 other languages at the click of a button. It's not the best translation. It's better than nothing. I wouldn't waste your time with this one. Check the box. Move on. I feel like it depends on your audience, but. Yeah. I mean, every piece of advice on this tier list is situational. And, you know, I think one of the hard things about being a strategist for YouTube is that it's such a wide spectrum. There are people making educational content like Alex Hermosi on the same platform as people making pure entertainment content like Mr. Beast. And they are very, very different pieces of content and they live in the exact same place. So what applies to Alex does not apply to Mr. Beast and vice versa. And similarly, for every rule, or best practice, or piece of advice that exists in your niche, there is a video on the internet that does the exact opposite thing and succeeds. So you really need to pick and choose your battles and just kind of like use your own taste for your own content on which rules to apply and which ones to ignore. E? Bad detail, in my opinion. Yeah, it's not worth your time. Validate your ideas before producing them. I'm glad this one came up because I had a couple contrarian opinions earlier in this episode that said, you know, outlier theory is dead. You know, people are craving original content. I still think that in this new world that I'm kind of envisioning for 2026, you do need to validate your ideas. That doesn't necessarily mean go and check your competitors and see if they've made a similar idea to that. But you do need to kind of be aware of what's working on the platform and leaning into it. Similarly, like looking in news platforms, what's happening in the zeitgeist of traditional media, you know, see what people are interested in in this year. That's how you validate the ideas. It's not stealing titles word for word or concepts word for word. It's looking at the big picture. I do think this is good advice. Yeah, I think you've mentioned it a few times, like your time is limited. So if you have an hour, it's better to make something that you think will make you better. You have to think of every YouTube video as a bet, right? Because it takes a lot of time and money and energy to make any single YouTube video, even the most low lift ones. And so you want to place the bets that are most likely to have success. Because we're all optimizing for views. We all want this to be our career and that kind of stuff. And one of the ways to help strengthen your argument for placing any given bet is to just be very situationally aware of what's working in your niche, what's working on the platform, what's working in the zeitgeist of media as a whole and leaning into that. You know, I could make a fantastic video about about the lug nuts on my tire, on my car out there. But there's not really an audience for that kind of thing. It could be a work of art, it could be a masterpiece, worthy of being shown in the Louvre and some kind of museum. But if there's no appetite for that content, then you're not gonna win with it. - Every video that you do make is another video that you don't make because your time is limited. So you have to just do what's best, what you think will do best for whatever purposes that you're trying to accomplish. - It's a great idea. - I think the success of your video, like the most amount of success from your video comes from the idea itself. You can have a great idea, very poorly edited, it will still perform very well. You can have a terrible idea, edited by a master, and it only becomes a decent video at best. So Patty Galloway has a rule that I think is impossible to follow. Generate 100 ideas, pick one video to make. That's an insanely large bucket of video ideas to pick from. But it proves the point that he says, which is the idea is what determines the success of the video. - Where are we putting this one? - This is it here in my opinion. Maybe yes, here. - I think it's us, here. - Okay, thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a like or give us some kind of review on the audio platforms. It really helps us out in these early, early days of our show. If you wanna check out another episode, please look through our catalog and find something that's a good fit for you. Thank you, as always, and we'll see you next week.