The blurry line between Authentic Value vs Low Effort video

I had a hypothesis about content that turns out was false.

So lately I became a little bit busier with business, putting content at the side but I started to see a weird pattern in the business youtube space, lot of successful guys just create raw, unedited, authentic videos that get much more views than their overedited content. I saw this trend with authentic content/authentic editing, and also I just had little time for content creation.

So I had this idea: What if I double down on value, only use bullet points instead of scripting, no editing, and just use simple thumbnails.

It sounded good on paper: "people are not here for fancy editing or thumbnails they are here for value and authenticity"

I started to post video after video, but somehow it just doesnt resonated with the audience the videos didnt got too many views and they kinda flopped if this would have been my first video I would just say I should keep going but because I had evidence that I'm able to get views (for context the video before it got 1k+ views) I realised that the problem is with the content. And I overlooked a huge thing:

CONTEXT & EFFORT

so after trying to understand why my videos flopped and other channels got 100k+ views I came to 2 realisation:

Sam Ovens, Charlie Morgan, Andrew Kirby has the authority that justifies a 1 hour long uncut video.

if I sit down in front of the camera and talk for one hour, the audience asks: Why should I spend my time listening to this guy? He didn't even take the effort to edit this video....

If Sam Ovens or any other established authority sits down in front of the camera for an hour, people think: Oh it's so cool I can listen to a multi millionare's ideas, it feels like as I would be in the same room as him, he is sharing soo much value in this video!

I think who you are matters just as much as what you say and you have to consistently show up and associate your name and reputation with quality and value and than you will build out trust with your audience

2. As the title suggests the line between authentic content and low effort content became blurry (or at least for me) I didnt understand that there is still a lot of work that went into researching and gathering the information that those people talk about, honestly maybe even more. The idea of just turning the camera on talking for 20 minutes and getting 10k+ views is I think kinda an illusion when you just start out. Im currently not such a big of an authority figure that someone would spend 20 minutes of me sharing an idea that I find valuable talk about, and I think this is a hard to swallow pill for most small creators which is: your videos are not as good as you think they are, you spending a lot of time on the video is basically just an entry ticket to the youtube game, making a low effort video (for new youtubers) is basically the equivalent of not even playing the youtube game. Alex Hormozi says that there is no such thing as a video that is too long only a video that is too boring.

I think there is 2 types of effort you need to put into the video:

(btw if you are still reading its because you can feel that I actually put EFFORT into making this, and not just journaled my thoughts for a few minutes)

PACKAGING EFFORT

this is the simpler one, a nice thumbnail and editing suggest that you actually spent time on the video, most people who wants to get into the personal branding space already has this covered, nice camera, microphone, editing, thumbnails, the video feels professional, however... they usually miss creative effort

CREATIVE EFFORT

My last few videos have been just content that was just content, it was for the sake of "personal branding" it was a numbers game, and they all flopped. I spent 1 day a week to make the video that little effort can be clearly seen from the video. In the past every content I published was its own magical creative project, when I finished it I was proud that I can add this to my library of content, and I knew that once one video goes viral the views will overflow into all these videos as well. To prove this point even further some post I made in this group in 2022 are still getting engagement even when I became inactive in the group for the simple reason that when I made those posts I actually put all of my effort into those posts and didn't half ass them.

So to wrap it up: If you are just starting out without any online reputation and very little skills with content creation you cant really afford to create low effort videos because it wont even have a chance against everyone else on the home page and when you actually push your creative comfort zone and put in much more value and effort into each content you create you can get to the point when you enter the game of youtube. Authenticity and storytelling is great but we shouldnt forget about the importance of creating valuable stuff because we live in the age of infinite leverage.

btw this is a reminder more to myself than to anyone else. Also I hope you found this valuable

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