"Best Practices" Are Dumb. Make Promises Instead.

But only if you can keep them.

The religion of “best practices” bothers me... A lot.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with “best practices”, and truthfully they’re vital to the long term success of any social media channel.

But they’re not what you think they are...

They’re not a checklist, prescription, or set of procedures to be blindly followed for social media success.

In reality, they’re a promise of quality to the viewer.

If your content sucks, following many of the “best practices” can actually make things worse.

If a YouTube video has a great thumbnail, title, and captivating intro, that’s a promise of quality by that creator, whether they realize it or not. Those are difficult things to do, and it suggests the creator has done the necessary work to make a video worth watching.

Bad content paired with good “best practices” can mean a promise has been broken to the viewer, and trust has been violated.

For established creators, this might not be a big deal. Their audience already trusts them, and can more readily forgive a misstep here or there. For newer creators looking to establish themselves, this can be a death sentence for their channel.

Subscriber counts have become a vanity metric, with watch times and returning viewers being the real measure of value.

Ignoring the concept of “best practices”, and instead focusing on fulfilling promises is one of the smartest things a newer creator could ever do.

“Promises” aren’t new to creative writers.

Readers have expectations when they pick up a book, and it’s the authors job to fulfill the promises they make to that reader.

If a book is in the Science Fiction section of a bookstore, a “genre promise” has been made to the reader. If the first few chapters of the book set up and establish what appears to be the main character, a “character promise” has been made as well.

If the reader finds the book is actually a romance story and the “main character” isn’t relevant after the 4th chapter, they will close the book immediately and never give the author a second thought.

A writer can spend years working through a story, but if they don’t understand promises to the reader, their book won’t be published, or no one will buy it.

Content creators, on the other hand, can publish a video within minutes of filming it, and then have an algorithm place it in front of audiences all over the world.

This is what makes social media so powerful, and also why the Internet is filled with so much nonsense.

Judging by the numbers, most content creators are making promises they can’t keep, and viewers aren’t giving them a second chance.

Instead of blindly following “best practices”, newer creators should be asking themselves a simple question — “which promises can I keep, and which ones are a gamble?”

Audio and video promises are easy.

Just use your cell phone and purchase a wired set of headphones. Is it the best? No. Will people care? Probably not.

From there, things get more challenging.

You need to become both a storyteller and orator, which is tough because those are different skill sets. A fantastic author might be a terrible audiobook narrator, which is why few authors narrate their own books.

To be a successful content creator for YouTube or any other social platform, you have to be great at both. If you’re not, some viewers might be patient and give you the chance to improve. Most though, will never see another video of yours again, because you also broke a promise to YouTube.

The ‘Recommended” feed is a competition for viewer attention.

Impressions — the number of viewers given a chance to click on a video — are precious. Viewers are impatient and want to be entertained the instant they open the app.

If that doesn’t happen, they’re likely to leave, which is a problem for YouTube as well as the videos on-screen during the exodus.

To determine whether or not a video is deserving of impressions, YouTube relies on viewer feedback.

Every time a video is clicked on, hovered over, or swiped away from, YouTube adds it to the “worthiness calculation” for impressions.

YouTube wants your video to do well because that means viewers are exposed to more ads, even if you’re not monetized.

Good thumbnails, titles, intros, and metadata are promises to YouTube that can increase the likelihood for impressions.

If you break promises with YouTube, a “shadow ban” could take effect, even if your content improves.

YouTube success comes down to consistently keeping the promise of quality. That’s it.

Good thumbnails, captions, and SEO are all important. To be successful on YouTube, you’ll need to have those promises in place as well.

But if you suck at storytelling, this is your permission to have awful thumbnails and titles while you work to fix that first.

You can always go back and redo the thumbnails and titles, but nothing can fix terrible storytelling.