The 2 Best Days to Upload a Video to YouTube
When you post a video matters just as much as what’s in the video
Dear Creator Nation,
When was the last time you took a moment to reflect on your life? Seriously. What’s working? What’s not? What are you missing in your life or business right now? Where do you see yourself in five years? As stigmatized as “journaling” is these days (I’m picturing Jack Dorsey on a meditation retreat in Wyoming), getting your thoughts down on paper is a fantastic way to see your life from a new perspective.
Journaling is a personal tool for me, but it's also crucial in the business world, specifically in the creator space. The life of a YouTuber is messy. You’re constantly uploading new videos, identifying novel trends, and engaging in manic comment sections. It’s difficult to sit back and ask yourself: what the hell is actually going on right now?
This newsletter is first and foremost a resource for YouTubers to better understand their data, but it’s also a place where we, AMA, can sit down and discuss our strengths, weaknesses, and vision as a fast-growing startup. From the outside, it’s been one month since we launched our content strategy. On the inside, it’s been 4½ weeks of experimenting, hustling, networking, and occasionally getting dunked on. We’ve met some really cool YouTubers and presented our content to numerous CEOs, but we’ve also been punched in the guts and seen weeks worth of work completely flop in public.
Let’s reflect on what strategies have worked, fallen flat, and some ideas moving forward:
✅ Mass DM big youtubers & creator-adjacent people
❌ twitter threads (too small for this)
✅ consistently engage with our followers
❌ youtube rewind reward
✅ make newsletter titles clear (i.e. “Three Ways to Optimize Thumbnails”)
❌ threads not related to youtube (i.e. crypto)
A few ideas to play around with:
We analyze YouTube videos that are trending and discuss what made them special
Feature youtubers on our newsletter and have them plug our content to their audience
Do deep dives—threads, video analysis, & industry overviews— into niche areas of YouTube, like gaming or makeup communities
We’re not confident that any of these will make us the Morning Brew of YouTube, but what we are confident in is our ability to continue experimenting with different ideas and find a way.
⛄ YouTube Seasonality
Most creators I’ve met believe that success lies entirely in producing incredible content on a regular basis. What if I told you that the key to generating an extra 10-20% of views on each video is not just figuring out what to post, but when to post it. Here are a few crucial trends we’ve noticed when it comes to YouTube seasonality, including a tutorial on how to determine the optimal posting day for your unique channel:
WEEKENDS WIN, ESPECIALLY SATURDAYS
Think about when you consume the most content—movies, newspapers, & tv shows. For most people the answer lies from Friday night to Sunday afternoon, or during prime leisure time. YouTube revolutionized the entertainment industry but it didn’t fundamentally alter human tendencies. Then, it should come as no surprise that the average video performs best on Saturday, followed by Sunday and Friday.
We analyzed hundreds of videos from a popular biking channel to determine if this theory held up.
For the most part, it did: Saturdays showed not only the greatest number of views, but the highest average-watch-time and click-through-rate. Sunday unsurprisingly claimed second place, though Monday did beat out the popular third-place candidate of Friday. Perhaps the amusement of Sunday drags into the gloom of Monday, or maybe more content is produced on the weekends and thus is consumed on Mondays.
THE REAL ANSWER: IT DEPENDS ON YOUR AUDIENCE
Uploading content on the weekends is a general rule of thumb, though this strategy is hardly universal and depends on a YouTuber’s specific audience. The NFL, for instance, likely receives more engagement by posting videos on a Thursday night rather than a Saturday night. Why? Easy: football is played on Thursdays and not on Saturdays.
One of our clients makes educational content for high school students. We noticed that despite national trends his engagement is strong early in the week and declines into the weekend:
This isn’t a shocker either. I’m personally a feen of Monday motivational content. You’ll often find me binging some David Goggins guru-type-shit on Monday mornings alongside my hot coffee (ironically, with extra sugar).
The overall takeaway is that seasonality is unique to every channel. Entertainment does best on weekends. Productivity videos on Mondays. Law and Order clips on Wednesdays. You get the point.
So what days should you post on? It’s easy:
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE ON YOUTUBE STUDIO
YouTube studio (& Creator’s Toolbox) is a required tool for any YouTuber. To see habits of your audience:
click ‘Analytics’
→ Audience
→ ‘When your viewers are on YouTube’
And BANG 💣. Start scheduling content around when your audience spends the most time on YouTube
🎥 Video of the Week
📱 Youtuber: Mrwhosetheboss (shorts channel)
👀 Views: 3.5M
👍 Likes: 365k
💬 Comments: 966
🔔 Subscribers: 9.3M (main channel), 2.2M (shorts)
💘 Why we loved it: Arun (Mrwhosetheboss) is crushing shorts and it’s no surprise why. His videos are clean, entertaining, and easily digestible. He knows how to deliver information in a way that is natural and action-packed. This shorts features the 5 craziest phones you’ve ever seen—a wacky experience for any native iPhone-user like myself. Check it out!
🎬 Action Steps:
Read our thread about YouTuber and creator-besite Justin Kan:
Follow us https://twitter.com/amagrowth
Think this would help a YouTuber or creator you know? Forward it to them!
Btw, we’re off the next two weeks but excited to be back with y’all in 2022! Happy holidays 🥳
Sent with 💜,
Noah from AMA
Liked this a lot, nice job!