Ask any YouTuber and they will tell you that generating significant views and subscribers isn't easy. But with the right strategy and tools, any video creator can build an engaged subscriber base when they understand what those subscribers want to watch.

Appealing to an audience to watch content you are passionate about making is just the first step, you need to know how to reach them and get your videos discovered. Our guides to how to guide more views on YouTube will give you the best tips to succeed on the platform.

How To Get More Views on YouTube

Do you want to make money on YouTube? Millions of creators are earning a very good living from the platform by uploading content that drives huge views and engagements. Whether that income is from advertising revenue, merch sales, or brand deals, we keep you updated with best practises and ideas.

How To Make Money on YouTube

Do you know how to do keyword research so you understand what videos people are actually searching for on YouTube? Do you know how to create a custom YouTube thumbnail? Do you know how to create a Playlist on YouTube?

vidIQ has a ton of tips that will help every creator maximise their video content. We publish content every week to keep you up to date with all the best practices.

YouTube Tips & Tricks

If you’ve put off creating your own YouTube channel because you’re overwhelmed with the choices you need to make or are panicking because you feel you lack the right skills to succeed, worry no more and welcome to the only resource you’ll need to fulfill your video creator dreams.

If this is your first time here, we have a 

 that aims to educate you on your YouTube journey. And if it is your plan to grow your channel, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, and click on our notification bell so you don't miss any of our latest tips, tricks, advice, and news.

How to Start Your YouTube Channel: 10 Top Tips

We promised 20 tips to kickstart your YouTube channel, so let's start delivering on that promise with 10 tips in this post and 10 tips in the 

. All the tips are covered in this video too:

So amazingly, there are still some people out there who are thinking of starting a YouTube channel and have been for months, possibly even years. My advice to you is, ready or not, start now. And I'm not telling you this as a New Year's resolution. Every moment you hesitate or procrastinate, there are thousands of video creators starting their YouTube channel today, and gobbling up all your potential audience. You don't want that.

Feel the fear, do it anyway. Start, press record. Record whatever you want today. It doesn't matter if it doesn't end up on YouTube. You need to gain experience in getting in front of the camera, getting behind the camera, using your editing program. You need to start creating content to find out whether or not you enjoy making videos before you know whether or not you enjoy being a YouTuber.

Tip #2 Learn How YouTube Works, No Seriously:

The chances are, that the first video you make is going to absolutely suck. Fantastic, you've made a video. You've made the first step, and in six months’ time, you'll look back at that first video and think yeah, that really was terrible, but you've gotta start the journey somewhere. And with that, you've gotta start your YouTube channel somewhere as well, even if you're not ready. Create a YouTube account, upload a video to YouTube. You don't have to publish it, that's the important thing.

You need to gain experience going through the workflow of uploading videos. The last thing you want is having a brilliant video ready to upload, but you don't know how the YouTube system works. Again, experience is going to trump any advice any of us can give you, so record a video, upload it to YouTube. You don't have to publish it.

Tip #3 Develop a Strategy you Will Actually Follow:

While getting some practical experience behind you is obviously a good thing, you also want some form of strategy. So, answer these questions:

What do you want your channel to achieve on YouTube

, and when you're answering this, try and answer it from a viewer's perspective, not your perspective. So I don't want to hear about hitting 10,000 subscribers, a million views, or whatever. If your viewers know that you're in it for your own self-gain, they will see through it and immediately switch off. Viewers want to know what they can gain from the content, and you want to sell that as much as possible in your videos.

 Again, try and be as specific as possible. What age range? What gender, if you are going to a particular gender? What type of demographic? What are they interested in? You need to know who's going to watch your content.

 There are millions of gaming channels out there, hundreds of thousands of Fortnite channels out there. How are you going to distinguish your content from everybody else who's already on YouTube making content? You need to disrupt the status quo, not join it, because you'll never be seen.

how are you going to deliver this content?

 Is it going to be every day, once a week, at a particular time of the day? Think about when your audience is most likely to watch YouTube, and how much YouTube they can watch per week, and then tailor your content to those watching habits, and think about whether you're going to do video on demand, live streams, what's going to be best for you and your audience?

Tip #4 Find Your Niche and Build the Hell Out of It:

live streams, you'll know this one off by heart. Niche down. Let me give you a quick example. What's your channel about? If you're giving an answer such as, "My channel's about beauty, and it's about travel, "and it's about vlogging," then it's about too many things. 

. It should be about one specific topic, when you start your channel, because you need to appeal to a very specific audience.

Once you've grown your channel, and you've got millions of subscribers who fall in love with you, you can take them on a journey wherever you want, but to begin with, the audience is only interested in the content. They have no investment in you. Try and remember that. It's a cruel lesson to understand, but it will help you when you first start out on YouTube.

Once you've thought about and answered all of these questions, I want you to wrap it all up in a nice little present, called your value proposition. This is your elevator pitch. Try and tell your audience who you are, and why they should watch you, in around about six words.

. It tells you the who, YouTubers, video creators, and why they should watch, because they will learn how to grow their channels. But we've managed to do that in four words. Now it's your turn.

Tip #6 Invest in the Right Audio Equipment:

If you've just started out on YouTube, and you're wondering what your first tech upgrade should be, it is 100% audio, and here's why. Bad audio is so much more distracting than bad video, and everybody hates onboard microphones. 

So if you can, get yourself a dedicated microphone for your camera,

 and if you're recording from a computer, you can't go far wrong with a Blue Yeti.

Tip #7 Create a Formula with Template Videos:

Videos need structure, so when you make your next video, try to think of how you will develop a show formula, that you can use as a template for your future videos. Remember at the beginning of this video, I literally gave you a hook. An introduction, a teaser to what's going to be going on for the rest of this video. Then we have the branded intro, followed by an introduction to who we are for new viewers, a call to action to subscribe to our channel, and then we jumped into the meat of the content where we are right now, and at the end of this video, you'll see how we round this all up.

Your show formula will take time to structure, and it will evolve over the course of your YouTube journey. Try and keep an eye out for this when you watch your favorite YouTubers. As rough and as random as they might appear, there is always structure and story behind each video, and that's why you watch them.

Some people love analytics, others hate them, but there are a couple that are crucial to keep an eye on, whether or not you want to look at that analytics. The first is 

This represents how enticing your titles are, and how clickable your thumbnails are. Check the click-through rate for your channel as a whole, and on individual videos as you test. I'm not going to give you all of the same target to reach. Check what your current click-through rate is, and whether it's two, four, six, or eight percent. I want you to try and improve that by two to three percent this year. It will bring in so many more views.

The other metric, as it always has been, is 

. Generally speaking, the more watch time you get, the more YouTube is going to promote your content. But if you make shorter videos, that doesn't necessarily mean you must make longer videos, because your audience might not react very well to those longer videos.

What I will say is maximize the value of your watch time in the videos that you have. That's by looking at relative audience retention. How does your video stack up to similar videos, in terms of whether people are still watching or not, and try and improve the relative audience retention. Having said that, if your average view duration is 60, 70, 80%, you're doing really well, and it gives you a license to try testing longer videos.

Verify your YouTube account. That will give you access to the most important tool on YouTube, which is custom thumbnails. We've got a video here on how to do it.

Tip #10 Create an Engaging, Interesting Channel Banner:

If I see another generic cityscape, or rolling hills in the channel banner when we do channel audits, I'm going to rip out my hair.

10 more tips or creating and growing your YouTube channel

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Members of the vidIQ family that have upgraded to our Boost and Pro packages get immediate access to the Academy 

 so you can kickstart your YouTube success today! Access to the exclusive vidIQ academy will give you a huge advantage over your competitors from the get-go. 

Kick off your YouTube dreams with the tools you need to launch YOUR channel. We've got the top tips just for you!

How to Start a YouTube Channel: 10 Brilliant Tips

Nobody likes nor wants to read sub4sub comments so here is how to block them from your channel.

Click on your YouTube profile picture in the top right hand corner of your screen

Click on ‘Settings’ in the left hand column

On the screen that pops up click on ‘Community’

You’ll see a screen that shows your channel moderators, people you've hidden from your channel, and a section at the bottom called ‘Blocked Words’

Add the list of keywords you want to block here

The Blocked words box works very much like video tags. You type in a word or phrase, press enter, and that will create the blocked word. You can use spaces as well to write complete phrases, such as, "Subscribe to me." You can remove blocked words by either clicking on the cross next to the phrase or by pressing the backspace key.

To help you get started, this is the list of blocked sub for sub words we use at vidIQ

You can also automatically place comments with sub4sub content, or other hashtags and links in them to be held for review. To view and review these comments, go to the ‘Comments’ page in the Creative Studio and you will see three tabs at the top.

 is YouTube's automated attempt to filter out comments such as, "Sub 4 sub?" Which sometimes it gets right, while other times it filters out completely legitimate comments.

 is where you will find those comments that have been weeded out from your blocked words list. Oh, and if you're wondering why some of our comments are blurred out, it's because they contain foul and abusive language, so feel free to add such words and phrases to your blocked list too.

You have several options on how you can deal with these comments, you can:

Permanently hide the user from your channel, so you never see any of their comments again

Now, while we're on the subject of comments, vidIQ has a cool little tool that allows you to create comment templates, so instead of typing the same response out many times, to the same question or the same comment, you can do a couple of clicks and it automatically places it in there for you. Saves me tons of time, every single day. And if you're wondering what that one tool is, it's all part of the vidIQ Chrome extension ⬇️

 then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Sub4Sub comments on YouTube are beyond annoying so here's a way to block them completely - for good!

How to Block & Remove Sub4Sub Comments on YouTube [Block List Included!]

When it comes to video, viewers will put up with a lot such as shaky camerawork, and bad lighting, but bad audio is just way too frustrating. If the sound if off, the viewer will be quick to give up and simply move on to the next video. But 

creating better audio is an art form in itself

, and a brand-new language for creators to learn. Understanding terms like cardio, patters, and gains is just the start of understanding this technology so we can buy and set up the right equipment.

Welcome to this week’s episode of TubeTalk where we are going to break down all your audio requirements. So, where do you start? When you look online, equipment is either really, really cheap or really, really expensive with everything in-between. So, how do we know what to get, and more importantly, how do we get the right microphone that's going to do the job for the application that we want?

We’re joined by Laura Davidson, the Marketing Development Specialist at 

, and she is here to give us all of the answers of every possible question we've ever asked about mics. Laura Davidson has been in the audio industry for over 13 years and has honed her skills as a product demonstrator, specialist, marketer and singer/songwriter. In this podcast you will learn:

Why and how mics differ depending on exactly what you need them to do

The difference between a cardioid and an omni-directional mic

Why you might choose dynamic mic over condenser mic

The right mic for changes in broadcast frequency and bandwidth

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

TubeTalk has been informing video creators and marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

How to Choose the Right Microphone for Creating YouTube Videos: Full Transcript

Liron Segev: Laura, welcome to TubeTalk. Can you give us like a two-second overview. Where do you fit into the picture with Shure? Who is Shure?

Laura Davidson: So, Shure has been around for 94 years, so a little bit of time. We've always been a U.S.-based company. We're based outside of Chicago, and got our start in broadcasting and PA systems when they started to get too big for people to be heard on like stages and venues got too big.

We made mics that actually amplified people without feeding back horribly, so that was kind of what we became known for. We've since gone on to create some of the most legendary microphones that you've seen. Elvis used our mics! Our SM58is kind of our industry standard dynamic vocal microphone. And so, we make that, but we also make wonderful other things for podcasters and content creators and people who like to listen to music. We make headphones and earphones. Not many know that. So, my job is to kind of go out into the world and tell people about the brand who might not be familiar, and those who are, let them know that we make a full range of other cool things.

Liron Segev: Okay. So now, let's put ourselves in the driver's seat. I know I need better audio. Okay. I've listened. I've heard you. You've convinced me, but where do I even start? Because I see on your website, you've got this little wizard at the top saying, "Hey. What do you want your mic for?" Is there really such a difference in the mics depending on what you're going to be using them?

Laura Davidson: There's a few things to take into consideration. The application is where you want to start, which is why we made our website the way that it is, where you can say, "Okay. I'm going to be using it in performance and production, voice or speech or with an instrument. Each one of those applications is going to require a different type of mic, and we make microphones that can capture several different types of things.

We also have a podcast mic option if you want something that is going to be able to capture the human voice very well, so the frequency response is going to be nice and tailored for that. And we can get into that in a bit because that's a little geeky.

But, if you know that you want to use a mic for speech, you want something that's not going to have, especially for podcasting, not a lot of plosives, so those Ps coming through. And so, what I'm talking through right now is something called the SM7B, and you're talking through one as well, I believe.

And it's a microphone that's been around since the '80s. Michael Jackson recorded Thriller on this microphone. And here we are today still using it because it's got this amazing response that captures the details and richness of pretty much everyone's voice. It's kind of insane, actually.

Liron Segev:	The application is critical. So, if I know I'm going to be recording music, or different things. If I'm going to be recording just purely us chatting, that's the application. If I'm going to be recording my YouTube video clips and maybe I'm mobile, well, that's a different mic altogether.

Liron Segev: So, do we have to start with what? Basically, asking ourselves the question, "What's the primary usage of this mic?"

Laura Davidson: Yes. That's a great place to start.

Liron Segev:	Okay. So, assuming I now know that, so let's say I want to capture lots of audio, but I don't want all this background music. I'm going to be doing it on the go. So, I'll be at events, and you know events are buzzing with Wi-Fis, and everybody else's chat, and lots of noise. How do I make sure that I'm going to be able to capture the person I'm interviewing or me doing my vlogging style? I believe that there is some sort of patterns I need to look out for?

Laura Davidson: Yes. So, the polar patterns are what that's called, and we have some great videos that you can go online and find just about mic basics. But, essentially the polar pattern is how the microphone picks up the signal - the cardioid pickup pattern is the most common, and it’s called cardioid because it's shaped like a heart. So, think cardio.

That particular mic is directional, so what that means is it's not going to pick up all things coming into it. It's going to pick up what's coming into the front of the mic. But once you go off axis or behind the mic, it's not going to pick up. So, that one's really great for doing things like this where we're talkinrectly into the mic, not moving around a lot, but it's also great for stage use because it's so directional. It's not going to pick up the band or the ambient sound as much as something like an omni-directional mic, which picks up as omni implies, all around or everything.

You have to take that into consideration so that you know how close you're going to be micing your source. That's the second thing to taken into consideration. After you figure out what you're going to use it for, you figure out how you're going to use it in the field or based on the source that you're using it on, how close you need to get to it.

The most common is your cardioid mic, and then omni-directional is typically used in a lavalier mic, which is one that you would clip onto your shirt to do interviews.

You use omni-directional lav mics for interviews or in a theater setting for instance. We make a cool series called TwinPlex, which just came out, which everyone should Google if you're using any sort of micing any sort of theater applications. It's unbelievable.

But there's also super cardioid, which is an even tighter pickup pattern than the cardioid, and that one's really great for vocals and stage vocals because it's even more focused so you get even less bleed from the stage or the ambient noise and more focus on the source going directly into it.

There's also a hypercardiod, which goes one step further than that. And there's a little bit of bleed that goes out the back of that because it's hard to explain, but if you think of the cardiod or the pickup pattern as kind of like a balloon. If you squeeze the balloon in the middle, a little bit is going to shoot out the bottom, right? So, two tops and the bottom. So, as you tighten your balloon or your pickup pattern, some of the pickup pattern shoots out the back, and that would be kind of like the hypercardiod. So, that one's great for stage, but it can be more prone to feedback, so you just have to take that into consideration. If you are using it in a louder, band scenario, it's not always the best, but it is amazing on the voice.

And then, bi-directional, which you're familiar with, with the MV88+, which essentially has two directions, so you have one microphone with two surfaces of pickup, the front and the back of the microphone, and that's handy for interviewing. Definitely interviewing in the field, especially, so you don't have to bust out two mics. You can use the MV88+ and get you on one side and me on the other.

Liron Segev:	Yeah. So, thinking your balloon kind of example, it's almost you're squeezing the middle.

Liron Segev:	And you get some on the left and some on the right and we both come across beautiful and clear.

Laura Davidson: Yes, exactly. And there's also different types of microphones, too, which we can get into as far as dynamic and condenser. Bi-directional is just a great pickup pattern for capturing two sound sources from one mic. So, you won't have independent tracks of said audio but it's just a great thing to use if you don't want to lug a bunch of equipment around.

Liron Segev:	Yep. So, like a grab and go. This is perfect. I have personally used this many times, the 88+. I've stuck it straight into my phone. I've shot interviews in the field. Had an opportunity to interview a very high-profile individual, and there was simply no time to go and set up and get equipment. These people are on the go. You either do it on the spot, or you lose the opportunity. I set this thing up and within seconds, I was ready to go, and the quality was unbelievable. So, definitely two thumbs up in endorsement of that one. Absolutely.

Liron Segev: So now, we have the patterns.You mentioned condensers and boundaries, so it gets even weirder?

Laura Davidson: Yes. So, that's the actual type of microphone itself. Changing sound into an electrical signal, essentially.

So, the dynamic is the most common, and that's like our SM58 stage microphones, handheld microphones. Those are dynamic, and the way that it works is there's a diaphragm, a very thin piece of material. You speak or sing into it, and it makes it vibrate physically from the sound waves coming from the source. It’s then attached to a magnetic coil that's centered around a magnet, and when you move it with those sound waves, it moves the coil up and down around the magnet creating a magnetic field, which then transfers that signal down the cable to your board and into your dock. It's pretty basic, but it's actually kind of complex when you get into more of the nitty gritty.

A microphone is a transducer, and a transducer is just taking signal or sound and creating an electrical signal. It's transducing it, changing its form, so that's the one way of doing it, the dynamic way.

The other type of mic that is most common is condenser. A condenser takes the magnet out of the equation, and uses a very thin diaphragm, even thinner than the dynamic. And it's surrounded by, instead of the magnet, electrically charged plates. So, you sing through or speak through the microphone, and it will move that thin diaphragm and create this electrical charge which goes through and typically requires phantom power to get the signal transferred into an electronic signal.

Liron Segev: I want to understand this because the more we understand it, the better choices we're going to make. This is why I love what you say. I want to know the difference. Why would I choose dynamic over condenser or condenser over dynamic, or would I choose one or the other?

Laura Davidson: Yes. You would choose one over the other. Condensing microphones tend to be more sensitive. Because they don't require as much sound to move the diaphragm, and because they don't have that mechanical weight of the magnet in there to physically move, they're much more sensitive. So, condenser microphones tend to be used more in studio application where they're in a controlled environment because they're more sensitive. So, you don't want to bring them out, and you don't want to upset them. You don't want to use what we call a high SPL, sound pressure level, like micing up drums with a condenser you can do, but you'd tend to want to use a dynamic because it can take a lot more punch down through it without distorting or hurting the diaphragm. So, something to consider in that.

Liron Segev: So, in a controlled environment where it's going to be on a mic stand. It's going to be permanently mic’d up. You're not moving it around too much, the condenser microphone is going to be a better option. And dynamic, would I use that maybe as my field recording?

Liron Segev: Okay. And then, going back to the patterns, couldn't you get a condenser that's cardiod or a condenser that is omni?

Laura Davidson: Yes, absolutely. Yes, you can.

Liron Segev: So, the two are actually separate. So, patterns is one thing, and then, the type of mic is actually something separate. So you pick the best application, the best mic, and whether you're mobile or stationary, and all of those things come into effect. And now, together, you make up a combination of the best possible solution that you could get.

Liron Segev:	But then, you did mention something called a phantom power, and I did see that some mics require it. Some don't require it. What is this phantom power?

Laura Davidson: The phantom power is just giving direct current to microphones requiring electric power. So, it can either be done through a battery in the mic, which not many mics use those anymore, but we still have some that do. Or, through DC power, is provided by your mixer or your preamp, and it's delivered to the microphone through the cable. And so, but that's why sometimes you'll see "requires phantom power," and you'll see a +48V, and that just means that it's typically needing 48 volts of power to get the mic enough juice and signal so that it can be heard.

Liron Segev: Because dynamic don't require phantom, right?

Liron Segev:	So, some condenser mics require phantom power some do. And the ones that do, are we saying if I don't give it that phantom power, is the mic essentially just useless and off, or is it going to be at very low levels?

Laura Davidson: It won't work, essentially. Because remember how we talked about how condenser microphones have those electrically charged plates instead of magnet?

Laura Davidson: So, it's providing that electrical charge.

Liron Segev:	That's what it is. So, I have power. I now have a condenser mic. I have chosen cardioid, and I'm going to be recording this amazing sound and quality. But then, I look at the back of the mic. I'm about to plug it in, and then I see I've got something called an XLR, and then I've got a USB option. Which one do I go for?

Laura Davidson: Well, that's, again, use case scenario. I tend to recommend going with an XLR just because it's just more versatile. I can plug it into my Apollo Twin. I can plug it into a soundboard and use it in live scenarios. I mean, if it is a condenser mic like you said, you're going to be using it in the studio, but you need to just determine what you're going for. So, if you know you're going to be mobile, then I'd say, "Go with a USB connected mic like our MOTIV line of mics."

Those are all made for creators who want to be able to capture great sounding audio without a mixer, without any other devices. They want to plug right into their phone or their computer and be good to go. But if you want something that can do that through your Apollo Twin or through your interface of choice, then go XLR.

Liron Segev: Okay. So, we have the USB option. We can stick into our computer. I have the XLR. I can stick it into something, but you also mentioned something called a preamp. What's a preamp?

Laura Davidson: So, a preamp is kind of exactly what it says, preamplification. So, it takes a weak electronic signal, and basically boosts it so that it can be amplified and converts it into a signal that's going to be loud enough or strong enough for further processing.

Liron Segev: And this is where the whole gains things come into play?

Laura Davidson: Yeah. So, you plug in your microphone into your interface, and I adjust the preamp by touching the preamp button and turning up the signal, turning up the gain of the microphone so that it has more power going into my workstation, into my recording software, such as GarageBand or Cubase, whatever you're using. The higher quality preamp you have, the more effective the microphone is going to work better.

Liron Segev:	If I’m in my studio I can control the environment completely, and now I understand the kind of equipment I need. However, when I'm out in the field, I've got my mobile recorder. I want to go and do interviews on site. Do I go wired? Do I go wireless? What's my best options here?

Laura Davidson: Well, if you're going to be changing your locations all the time, I would recommend sticking with a wired microphone if you can. Reason being, when you're going wireless, there's a bunch of things you have to take into consideration to ensure that the microphone is going to work. One of them is line of sight, which in your application would be fine because you'd be standing in close proximity to whomever you're interviewing or whatever you're doing. But if your line of sight is impaired, it will cause dropouts because the mic and the receiver need to see each other, so to speak.

But then also, depending on where you are, if there are other frequencies in the area that are taken up by television stations. This new 600-megahertz crunch that all the mobile devices cram their way into, will have less bandwidth and frequency bandwidth options to broadcast in. So, let's say you're traveling all over the country. Those frequencies change depending on where you are. So, you might be broadcasting and getting your audio fine, and then a TV station could jump in there. Or, you might not know that the emergency band transmits on the band that your microphone is currently transmitting to. So, it's just a lot more complicated. If you're going to be going out and interviewing people and you want to be able to just get set up and ready to rock, wired is a great way to go.

Liron Segev: I prefer hand holding my mics, and I know that where I'm pointing at, that's where it's going to pick up the best signal.

Liron Segev: So, if I'm handholding a mic, what is a good robust mic from the Shure range for that? What's a good field mic that I should be looking at?

Laura Davidson: SM58, definitely. It's famous for its durability - there's videos of people hammering in a nail and then plugging it in, and it still passes audio. We've done beer tests where we've left it sitting in a glass of beer for days, and it still works. I mean, we don't recommend these things, but it's just really durable. It has this amazing internal shock mount that reduces handling noise, so you don't have that rustle when you're moving things around between you and your subject. And it's just because of that tight pattern. Like we said earlier, you're not going to pick up a ton of the other things around you, but you'll still get that context, so it doesn't sound too sterile.

And there are other microphones that we make that are specifically for interviews, and those are great, too. But I just, I love the 58. I love the price point. I loved the durability and the ease of use and form factor.

*Liron Segev: And durability is key because you want to throw something into your camera bag. You want something that's going to hold up against the test of time, and the last thing you want to do is arrive on site and then know that something is broken. So, durability is pretty key, and you also mentioned a shock mount. Now, can we just explain what that is? *

Laura Davidson: So, a shock mount is something that holds the microphone in the studio, free of being attached to the stand itself. It kind of suspends it in air so that it's only going to accept the signal that's going into it as opposed to any sort of external vibrations or stimulus.

Liron Segev: Essentially, whenever you bump kind of your table or whenever you're going to make some external noise, you want none of that to transfer through to your audio, right? And I cannot overemphasize enough how this is important. I have seen interviews literally being deleted and burned simply because the interviewer wasn't holding the mic in a certain way, wasn't stable with it, and all you hear is finger tap, finger tap, the mic's moving up and down, and that's pretty much that's done. I mean, it's literally you cannot salvage that.

All right. So, Laura, as we're kind of wrapping things up, my head is full of knowledge. I now know what I'm going to do, or I think at least I know what I'm going to be looking out for. Are there any other tips or tricks that you can give us newbies before we push that buy button, before we hit your website, to know what we're going to get?

Laura Davidson: Yes. I would say the best tip is to go and try the microphones if you can. Just like any instrumentalist tries a million guitars before they settle on the 20 that they're going to have, you need to go out there and see how it feels, how it reacts to your voice, and try it around the store if they'll let you with your field recorder.

Because you want to make sure that it's picking up the way that you want it to pick up, and not every microphone sounds the same on every voice. You can read recommendations where it's like, "Oh, I sounded like Barry White after using the SM7B," or so whatever. But if you want to sound like Barry White, you want to sound brighter than that. So, every mic reacts to the voice differently. There are some that are tuned specifically for voice, but I would just say try before you buy if you can.

Liron Segev:	Okay. That's a great tip. As we all do, we all read reviews. We watch YouTube videos, and this is why some people would swear by a certain kind of mic, and the exact same mic will get a different response from another person. But essentially, it could just be boiled down to the person themselves. They might just sound horrible on a certain mic because that's just the way they sound.

Laura Davidson: Right. And certain mics are made to react or tend to perform better for female vocalists as opposed to male and the same goes for speech as well. So, something to take into consideration.

Liron Segev: Okay, cool. So, that's a great, great, great tip. It's a great idea. Test your voice on a mic before you finally commit to one. It is a tool at the end of the day. It's a tool like your camera is. It's just a tool, but you want to get the right tool for the job that you want to do.

You also mentioned at the beginning that some mics can do multiple jobs - they are very good at doing the one thing, but will they also be okay and more than okay to do other kinds of jobs? Or, are we going to be purchasing three, four, five different mics depending on what we're going to be doing?

Laura Davidson: No, you don't. You don't have to. If your budget is limited, there are some mics that'll perform multiple tricks, so to speak. For example, the MV88+, it's a video kit. It has selectable polar patterns, and that's what makes that one really fun because you can, for example, set it to cardioid pickup pattern, do an interview. Set it to stereo pattern, and it will pick up the context of where you are because it's stereo dual channel, picking up all the ambient sounds. And then, you are lucky enough to get that interview, so you switch it up to bi-directional.

And then, you're in one channel, and your subject's in the other. So, it's like three. There's actually a fourth polar pattern, too, called raw mid-side, but you have three microphones, essentially, in your pocket. And so, that one's not a one-trick pony. And that, I tend to recommend to most content creators who want to be able to have flexibility in a number of different situations.

Liron Segev:	And again, I can attest that it does work like it says on the box. You literally swipe on the app, you're swiping to the left, swiping to the right. It dynamically changes the pattern instantly, and you simply hit record. It's just ridiculously simple, which is what I love about that.

Laura Davidson: Yep. Audio app and video version of the app as well.

Liron Segev:	And I've used it for podcasting on the go, and I've used it for videos on the go. And they work just beautifully across all applications. Where can we get more information?

Laura Davidson:	So, you can go to shure.com. And again, start the application journey right from the beginning. What are you going to be using it for? And let that website guide your way, and that'll give you all the information you need. We have tons of YouTube videos, webinars that you can access that give you tips and tricks and mic techniques. There's all kinds of information on how to mic your instrument, your voice, your field recordings, all that.

Liron Segev:	Okay. I didn't know that you had the mic techniques. I'm definitely going to be checking that out.

Laura Davidson: Yes. Shure Audio Institute is where you can find all those fun training opportunities.

Liron Segev:	Okeydoke. Laura, thank you very much for one more time for spending all your time on TubeTalk with us and really giving us the education. I apologize if these questions were very basic, but this is the kind of stuff we’re flooded with, and I want to make sure that everybody levels up their audio. It really makes that much of a difference. So, thank you, again, for your time.

Laura Davidson: Thank you for having me. Happy to do it.

Audio can make or break a video but if you're a beginner how do you choose the right microphone for creating the type of videos you make? Find out on this week's TubeTalk.

How to Choose the Best Microphone for YouTube Videos: TubeTalk 179 with Shure

As you may or may not know, PewDiePie smashed 100 million subscribers earlier this month and we were fortunate enough to capture the moment live. However, had this happened in September, that would not be possible as YouTube has confirmed it is shuttering public-facing exact subscriber counts for good.

I want you to search for your favorite channel on YouTube and tell me exactly how many subscribers they have right now. Depending on when you watch the video or read this post, you're going to get this answer or you're going to get this answer and that's called an abbreviated subcount.

To the shock of the whole YouTube community, YouTube announced these changes three months ago and now they have updated us all on how exactly they are going to work. To summarize; with the exception of channels under 1,000 subscribers whose subscriber count will always be displayed to the single digits, all channel subscriber counts will be rounded down, depending on how many subscribers the channel has.

For example, 1,234 subscribers becomes 1.23K subs. 123,456 subscribers becomes 123K subscribers. And yes, in the case of PewDiePie, even if he had 99,999,999 subscribers, it would show his counts as 99.9 million subscribers until he surpassed 100 million subscribers. Or at least something similar. YouTube have not yet made those changes, but they intend to make them over the month of September.

What You Need to Know About New YouTube Subscriber Counts

Now, those are the basics, but there are some really important questions that need to be answered. The first question is what about my channel? Am I never going to be able to see exactly how many subscribers I have? Well, that's actually a tricky one to answer, because yes, you will be able to see a subscriber count to the last digit in your Creator Studio dashboard.

But this count is usually delayed by at least 24 hours because, as you can see, it doesn't match up to the subcount we get for vidIQ on YouTube search pages. Those are, however, changes are going to impact YouTube users and video creators. For those changes also impact us. As part of these changes, third parties use YouTube's API Service, and that includes vidIQ, will also access these same public facing counts you see on YouTube. As of the time of recording, none of this has happened yet. So we can only make an educated guess, but it may be some of our tools begin showing some abbreviations, like this. But right now this a chicken and the egg situation until YouTube make the changes, our developers can't start their work on giving you the best data that's available to us.

And of course, subscriber counts represent a tiny part of the vidIQ Chrome extension, that will help you research YouTube, analyze any video on the platform, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps that will help grow your YouTube channel to even higher abbreviated subcounts. It is free to download and 

But on the other hand, some third party vendors live on real time subscriber counts. And they're going to be impacted massively. Abbreviated subcounts will kill the real time subscriber count cottage industry that FlareTV began almost a year to the day when they started following PewDiePie and T-Series' subcounts. It's still running today and has helped the channel grow by over two and half million subscribers. Going forward, no one will ever know quite how close these channels are to their next subscriber milestones.

So, why have YouTube done this? Well, they say that beyond creating more consistency, this addresses creator concerns about stress and wellbeing, specifically around tracking public subscriber counts in real time. Now my guess is that the majority of you are going to disagree with what YouTube is saying here. Subscriber counts have been around forever. It wasn't broken. Why are you fixing it? I love the gamification of hitting those targets.

And these are all valid points and when we did polls on this earlier in the year, around about 85% to 90% of you disagreed with what YouTube was planning to do with abbreviated subcounts. And YouTube know this is not a popular decision. In the same update, YouTube said, "While we know not everyone will agree with this update, we hope it's a positive step for the community, both those viewing and creating content."

We've not heard many voices in support of it, so anybody who does think it's a great idea, we'd love to start a constructive debate in the comments of the video above. As for my own personal opinion, I've got to be honest. I don't really like the change. I think the consistency argument doesn't really fly, because view counts can still be inconsistent throughout YouTube. And we're not seeing YouTube try to change them. And as an analytics geek myself, I think it's a shame that we're going to lose some purity in the data. These numbers have been accurately tracked to the single digit for years now. And we're going to lose those pages of history to these abbreviated counts.

And nobody's really going to know when the channels are hitting these huge landmarks until they've happened. Except for the video creator themselves and I think they're going to find it hard to share that data. Because they only get it from the channel analytics, which is delayed anyway.

However, I do understand the wellness argument of this change. This is the trend that social media platforms are going towards these days, with Instagram hiding likes. And I have to be honest, I personally haven't been negatively affected by real time subscriber counts. And there are those video creators who potentially have been. You think about the Tati Westbrook versus James Charles real time subscriber count and what happened there. There are real serious considerations of how this affects the mental wellbeing of video creators.

We knew it was coming but now YouTube has definitely confirmed that public-facing exact subscriber count numbers will shutter in September 2019.

YouTube Will Kill Exact Public Facing Subscriber Counts in September

YouTube descriptions, what have they ever done for your video? Well, they could be doing a lot more, if you actually wrote something worthwhile in them, but the truth is most YouTubers don’t, so here are a couple of tips and tricks to help you write better YouTube video descriptions. First, let's go through the hierarchy of importance:

The most important hook you have to pull in the viewer, is the 

. That's going to stop them from swiping or scrolling through the videos that are suggested to them.

, which provides some clarity for the video,

 to find out just how important tags are)

So when it comes to marketing your video, make sure you put most of your time, energy and resources into the thumbnail and the title. But the description does have its uses, and we'll start with the beginning of your description.

7 Ways to Optimise Your YouTube Description Right Now

There’s something that I want to stress at this point. If you see huge channels not paying any attention to video descriptions and not writing anything in them, that doesn't mean that you should do exactly the same thing. Those super-channels have already made it on YouTube, and they can do whatever they like. But when you're a smaller channel, trying to grow, making a good description is one of those marginal gains that gives you one or two percent more reasons to click on your video, as opposed to another, similar video of a channel of a similar size.

1. Use the Right Keywords to be Found in Search

There are two reasons why the beginning of your description is important. First of all, YouTube scrapes those descriptions for keywords, and it may help your video appear in Search. The higher those keywords are in the description, the more likely they are to be found by YouTube.

Second of all, when people are searching through video content, they will see a snippet of your description, roughly the first 140 characters, so think of your description as a Tweet when you first start to write it. If you're not sure how to start your description, a good idea is to more or less repeat your title.

You've no doubt put in a lot of effort into your title, and included as many keywords in there as possible, so if you put that in your description, and then maybe riff on the title a little bit, add a question in there, or a few more keywords, that's a good starting point for your video description.

The next thing you want to do is to include a subscribe link to your channel somewhere near the top of the description. Think of it as a point of sale. Your viewer could be on the edge of subscribing to your channel, and they just need a little bit of encouragement, and seeing a subscribe link in your video description may persuade them to do just that.

And you can make it even easier for them with this little subscriber hack. Simply copy and paste your channel home page, and then add this bit of code to the end of it - ?sub_confirmation=1. When people click on it, it will give them an automatic pop-up to subscribe to your channel. This does only work on desktop computers, but on a mobile it will still tune in to your channel page, where your viewer may subscribe to you.

Next comes a paragraph where you can go into more detail about your video content. Again, this is where you want to be using as many keywords as possible, so that YouTube can identify your content with as many associated terms as possible, which helps you in Search.

This doesn't mean keyword stuffing, where you're simply adding tags to your video description, that's against Terms of Service. But it may mean you're writing natural sentences, with a bit of repetition of those keywords. If you want a good example of this, check out the video description of the video at the top of the post.

The next thing you can do which can be really helpful to viewers, especially on longer videos, is to use time stamps. Time stamps are very easy to create and work on both YouTube descriptions and YouTube comments. All you need to do is create a time with a colon, for example, if you put in 1:53, that creates a link that when you click or tap on it, it takes you to one minute 53 in the video.

Now, as I say, if you've got longer videos, then this can be a great way to break up the video, and it gives you another opportunity to include keywords in your video description. And, once again, if you look in the above video description, you'll see some examples of this.

Next, there's nothing wrong with earning a little bit of extra cash from your YouTube videos, from non-YouTube tools, and that includes affiliate links in your video description. As long as you follow the rules. To quickly explain affiliate links, these are links to products and services that you create, that if the viewer clicks on them and buys something from those sites, you will earn a little bit of commission.

A simple example of this might be including an affiliate's gear guide so you're telling all of your viewers the type of camera, lighting, and other things that you use in your videos, and it gives them the opportunity to buy exactly what you use, and you earn a little bit from that. But as a disclaimer, let me stress this. Make sure you check out all of the YouTube Community Guidelines on how to use affiliate links and sell products and services on your videos, because you don't want to get in trouble, and have a strike put against your channel.

Now it is likely that you'll want to include these affiliate links among many other things in all of your videos, and so that's where you can start to use upload defaults. You'll find this under Settings in the new Creator Studio, and there is a section called Upload defaults.

Essentially, Upload defaults is all of the stuff that you want to include in every single video, so it will appear below everything else that we've already talked about. As a good example, if you go to the bottom of our video description and work your way up, you will see lots of things that come from our upload defaults.

For us, it's a case of answering commonly-asked questions, such as who vidIQ are, whether we support multiple languages, how can we download vidIQ, and videos that may help you understand how to use our tools. We also include social media links in there, so that we can communicate with our audience, whether they're on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and tell them when we have new content on any of those platforms. Head on over to Upload defaults and start to amend yours.

Attention YouTubers - how much value are you getting out of your descriptions? It could be a whole lot more if you follow our tips, tricks and hacks!

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