YouTube Skills: 10 Essential for Success

In today’s digital landscape, mastering the 10 essential YouTube skills is paramount for achieving success on the platform. From content creation and video editing to audience engagement and analytics interpretation, honing these skills empowers creators to stand out and thrive in the competitive world of online content creation. Aspiring YouTubers can pave the way for meaningful connections with their audience and sustainable growth for their channels by dedicating time and effort to developing these proficiencies.

 

1. 1. Learning how to present your content

The first is learning how to present your content that is a youtube skills. You might be the best at coming up with great video ideas. However, if you need to learn how to communicate in an engaging way that keeps people interested, guess what will happen? Nothing. And it doesn’t matter if you’re making gaming content, cooking videos, vlogs, or teaching people stuff. Whatever it is, if you can’t communicate engagingly or interestingly, people will tune out.

Communication is a significant skill in industries related to people just doing voiceovers. Companies like Disney and Pixar hire real actors to voice their cartoons because the actors are professional communicators. To help with this, I recommend a channel by Vinh. He can help you better understand the nuance of presenting your ideas. But the idea is that being a better communicator will help you do better on YouTube.

 

2. 2. Video Production

Next is video production.
Now, when it comes to video production as youtube skills, you don’t have to go out and get the best cameras or anything like that, but you do need to understand some bare-bone basics if you want your content to be received better. For example, when making your videos, it’s important where you’re positioned in the frame.
To assist with this, you can view stuff around the rule of thirds. The rule of thirds divides the frame into nine equal parts. Another tip outside the rule of thirds is that you also want to ensure that you have some headspace—a little space above your head to the top of the frame, but only a little headspace. And this is where you will start thinking about the rule of thirds, how things look, and so on.

Getting good sound in your videos is also essential in video production. It doesn’t have to be the best; it just must be where people can hear what you’re talking about. As part of good sound, it’s also essential to make sure that everything runs smoothly with the sound that would cause people to be distracted from what it is that you’re saying. Good audio will also help with your camera presence because people will hear you like you’re sitting in the room with them.
Lighting yourself as youtube skills, or if you’re not in the videos, lighting your subject so people can see you or the subject is also super important. Again, you don’t have to do anything fancy; technically, you can use the sun to help you light your videos.

 

3. 3. Editing

Next is editing as youtube skills. There is a vast difference between cutting videos and editing videos. But anyway, cutting videos is where you go into your editing software; you remove the silence, maybe you make a few corrections with the framing, and things like that, and then maybe you’ll add some graphics to your videos, maybe you’ll even have some music playing in the background.
But that’s all just cutting; that’s not editing. Editing is about creating an experience with your content. When you edit, you might slow down your video to create tension between the fast and slow parts. You can remove an entire section of your video that you’ve spent hours or days on to make it a better experience for the viewer.
Consider adding music to a part that starts slowly building up. As the buildup happens, you start cutting faster and faster as you get to your point, the climax of the game you’re sharing with people, or maybe the big reveal of that craft project or food you made.
Or you might slow things down a little bit, cut less, have more space between your words, and intentionally leave it in the video for the sake of the impact it will make. You get the idea. There’s a big difference; you must learn as youtube skills how to edit as a content creator.

4. 4. Engaged viewers

Next, on YouTube, keeping viewers engaged is extremely important, and by keeping people engaged, I don’t mean just having people like your videos; I mean having people interact with your content, enjoy it so that YouTube recommends it to them more, and then they come back to the channel. They watch more, and then they enjoy that, too.This is a youtube skills.
On YouTube, being intentional about what you’re doing is crucial. That comes down to the videos you’re publishing and the reason you’re publishing those videos. If you have goals you’re trying to accomplish with each video, that’s important.
I’ll consider publishing this video here as part of the bigger picture. What videos will I be publishing after this that will relate to this video that I publish and keep people coming back to the channel? It’s also important to zoom out and look at the bigger picture related to your content because, on YouTube, you build up this vast library of content over time. It’s essential to think about If somebody watches this video and I get them to the end, then in that case, what another video can I send them to once they get to the end of the video?” If you’re planning your content, you can plan all of this out, and you can create a much better experience for the viewers and cause more people to come back to your channel when you publish content they care about. This is must a youtube skills.

5. 5. Reading and understanding

Next is reading and understanding your YouTube analytics as a youtube skills, at least at a basic level. You don’t have to be a data scientist, but you do need to understand what’s happening on your channel to adjust if needed. All you need to do is go in and start paying attention to how people are responding to your videos; you can do this through your audience retention reports.
Start paying attention to how people are responding to your thumbnails and titles. You can see this through your click-through rate, and you can even level that up through your traffic sources report, looking at your click-through rate for the different traffic sources as well, meaning the different pages of YouTube.

If you’re trying to grow your channel, then it’s essential to make sure that you’re looking at the content that’s driving subscribers compared to the content that isn’t. For the sake of growth and serving your current viewers, it’s essential to know how many engaged people are coming back to your channel and how many new viewers are interacting with your channel because the new viewers are where the growth comes from.
But go into your YouTube analytics for each video you publish; you can learn a lot, and it can help you grow faster. It helps you better understand your audience, and it helps you do better overall.

 

6. 6. Time management

Next is time management as youtube skills. When it comes to time management, if you’re going to do this for an extended period, you can learn how to manage your time as it relates to working YouTube into what you’re doing.
Everybody has some spare time here and there to make content. Still, the trick is, to do this long-term, and especially for somebody that wants to do this full-time, it’s essential to work the process of coming up with video ideas, researching those video ideas, making the content, publishing that content onto YouTube regularly into your lifestyle so that it cannot only become something that you do regularly, but it can become a habit that will keep you moving forward and publishing new content and just growing as a person and as a channel overall.

One thing many creators will do, especially those who want to jump from a casual creator to a full-time creator, is work the process of creating content into their calendar. So, they’ll schedule what it is that they need to do to get it done, and then have that dedicated time, and make it as important as showing up to a job or showing up to a doctor’s appointment, or whatever, so can ensure that they get it done.

 

7. 7. Branding

Next is branding as youtube skills. When it comes to branding, many people think that branding is just a logo and the colors you use in your videos, but branding is a lot deeper than that. Branding is what you do in your content that makes people think a certain way about what you do, even when they’re not watching your content.
It’s the way you communicate, it’s your editing style, it’s those quirky things that you do that are a part of your personality. It’s your solid opinions or your lack of opinions. It’s the way that you tell stories. It’s what your videos look like; it’s what your videos sound like.
It’s the information about yourself that you’ve made publicly known in terms of things that you stand for, the things that you like or don’t like. As a content creator, many factors go into branding that can help you expand your channel and build your online brand. So, if you’re a new creator, learning about branding as quickly as possible is essential.
Two books can give you deeper insights on this one. One is called “Primal Branding,” by Patrick Hanlon, and you’ll hear everybody recommend this book when it comes to branding, especially around YouTube. The other is “Superfans,” by Pat Flynn. The difference between the two is that one is based on companies that have grown cult-like followings, and the other is more related to how things are currently on social media and developing a stronger relationship with your followers.
But read or listen to them both, and you’ll learn much about branding in those two books.

 

8. 8. Storytelling

Next is storytelling as youtube skills. Now, when it comes to YouTube, you’re making videos, entertaining people, teaching people things. So, because of that, learning a story is essential. Some people even say that storytelling is the most important thing. The reason for that is that there are a lot of creators out there that fly under the radar for some people to the point where they don’t even use custom thumbnails; they hardly edit their videos. Still, because they’re good at telling stories, they have substantial view counts and huge followings that are super into their actions. So, it’ll help you do that.
There’s a book that Mr. Beast recommends called “Save the Cat!” and a couple of others. But that would be an excellent place to learn how to tell better stories through your content. And if you’re a new content creator, learning how to tell stories will help you thrive much more robustly in the future.

 

9. 9. Networking and collaboration

Next is networking and collaboration as youtube skills. Networking and collaboration can be beneficial for you as a content creator.
It can be isolated if you are somebody doing all this yourself. But when you start networking with other creators or even collaborating with other creators, it opens the doors to these conversations with others living a similar experience to you when it comes to creating content.
And there’s tons of value when it comes to having friends doing similar things to what you are doing. They can give you feedback and help you notice if you go off track or are not paying attention for some reason. You can compare stats. You can share things you learn along the way, which will help you learn at double speed if you have one creator friend.
Networking as a content creator is where the most significant opportunities come from because when you’re meeting people, they’re doing cool stuff, and you’re doing cool stuff. They might think about you when opportunities come up and send that opportunity your way.

 

10. 10. Money management

Next is money management and just general business sense as youtube skills. In 2024, influencer marketing alone is set to be an $18 billion industry. Crazy, right? And that’s just influencer marketing. That does not include ad revenue. That doesn’t include affiliate marketing; it doesn’t include your product sales.
It doesn’t include any of the extras, specifically influencer marketing. If you take this seriously, you can have life-changing experiences and income from making content on YouTube. You know the old thing where parents say, “Oh, I want my kid to grow up and be a doctor.
I want my kid to grow up and be a lawyer.” Some doctors and lawyers are stopping being doctors and lawyers and are becoming content creators. That’s how ample the opportunity is here if you choose to take it. But, when you start making money from YouTube, or really from anything, your brain is going to trick you into thinking that it’s always going to be there and it’s going to last forever.
And it might last a long time, but it won’t last forever. Because of that, it’s essential to educate yourself on managing and investing your money and figuring out what to do with that money as it comes in. And even if you’re not making YouTube money, knowing this information is essential.
But if you are still determining what you would do if you started making an extra several hundred thousand dollars a year, or an extra million dollars a year, even an extra $50 or $100 thousand per year, then I recommend this book. It’s called “Simple Path to Wealth” by JL Collins. It explains the long-term impact of big spending. It can help you get a handle on what to do with all that money as it comes in if you need that information so that you can use your experience as a content creator to set yourself up very comfortably for your future.
So, cast off the lines, raise the sails, and let your YouTube adventure begin! With these skills as your compass, you’re on your way to building a channel that shines brighter than a supernova.