Sign up for TubeBuddy, install the browser extension, connect your YouTube channel, and BAM! Your view count will increase exponentially, you’ll have more subscribers than you ever dreamed of, and life will be grand. Except that’s not how it works. Not at all.
TubeBuddy is a tool, not a genie that grants your wish for YouTube success just for the asking. A hammer will not get you a beautiful house, but it sure can be helpful if you’re building one yourself. Canva will not guarantee you success as a graphic designer. But, it can definitely help by saving time and providing inspiration – which certainly improves your chances for success.
You won’t get more views or subscribers just by signing up for TubeBuddy and installing it. It’s a tool and you have to use it to build something. There are 4 major areas where TubeBuddy can help set you up for success – if getting more views and subscribers is your goal.
Save Time
Like I explained in THIS POST, one of the most important features I was looking for in a tool like TubeBuddy was to automate time-consuming tasks, like coming up with tags. TubeBuddy definitely saves me time by letting me fill in the tags field on my videos without ever leaving the YouTube video upload page.
It saves me time by suggesting titles, using templates, analyzing my video performance, providing information about other creators’ videos, and more because all of those suggestions and information are right there where I’m working. I don’t have to go out to a bunch of other pages and tools to dig for that stuff.
Inspiration
Title suggestions is the most obvious example of a place where TubeBuddy offers inspiration. Sometimes the suggested titles are so much better than what I thought of it, it gets me excited about my video idea all over again. In other instances, the suggested titles are quite what I was looking for but they provide me enough to get past my mental block and write a great title just by changing a few words or merging two title suggestions together.
The inspiration isn’t limited to optimizing the video I’m currently working on. Sometimes a suggested title, keyword, or tag won’t quite fit the video I’m working on but gives me inspiration to create another video or a suggested title, keyword, or tag, will inspire me to make a video that either goes deeper into a sub-topic of my current video or from an angle I hadn’t considered.
Insight
The insight I get from TubeBuddy comes in 2 flavors: communication and analysis. On the communication front, the keyword research and tag suggestions often tell me that the word or phrase I use to describe a topic isn’t the only one and maybe not the best one. For example, I consider Pepsi and Coke to be soda. Soda is the only word that would immediately come to my mind if I were talking about such products. Thankfully, I get some insight from TubeBuddy that tells me many people in the US refer to such drinks as pop, not soda. When I see that word appear in keyword research, I know I need to incorporate it so the people who call it pop have a better chance of seeing my video and relating to it.
Best Practices (aka All The Things!)
If you’ve watched any of the prominent YouTubers that focus on helping creators start and grow on the platform (i.e., Nick Nimmin, Roberto Blake, Think Media, etc.) you have likely figured out that there are some best practices recommended for every video you post. I’ve heard it referred to as “all the things” and that terminology is spot on.
What are all the things? The opinions vary slightly among the YouTube experts, but they often include things like: limit the amount of text on a thumbnail and make it readable, make sure the important part of your title is in the beginning so it doesn’t get pushed off on mobile, put your keyword in your title and description, fill in all the boxes on the upload page (including tags), add your video to a playlist, and so on.
TubeBuddy helps you make sure you’re doing all the things by providing you with an upload checklist and best practices. Both are lists that include things you don’t want to miss. The best practices checklist includes items that can be verified automatically by TubeBuddy. For instance, it can tell if you’ve uploaded custom captions or not, and will display as incomplete in the list when you’re uploading your video. You can add or remove items from your best practices checklist so long as anything you add can be programmatically verified by TubeBuddy.
The upload checklist includes things that can’t be automatically verified. For instance, the default upload checklist includes the item “Write a Compelling Title” and provides several bullet points that define what’s needed for a compelling title. You can add or remove items from your upload checklist. Say you want to make sure you end every video description with a cheerful thanks, you can add that to your upload checklist so you’ll never forget to check it. You can also import an upload checklist designed by another popular YouTuber like Roberto Blake.
There are SO MANY things to do when uploading a YouTube video… and as many ways to simply overlook any one of them. Having these checklists right there on the upload screen are a huge help!
So What Does That Mean?
There’s no template for a successful video that works every time on YouTube without fail. But, there are plenty of things to avoid and plenty of things to always include that give your video the best chance of attracting eyeballs and keeping them focused. TubeBuddy helps you do the good things (more efficiently), avoid the bad things, and discover the nuances specific to your channel and your audience so you can best position your videos for success.
TubeBuddy won’t magically improve your channel’s stats just because you install it. It’s a tool. It only works if you use it and if your video is about something people want to watch and the topic is presented in a way that they want to keep watching.
With those caveats understood, TubeBuddy can absolutely save you time, give you insights and information, and help you stay on-track with your vision for your videos and your channel.
