Daniel Braun
YouTube Content Creator
Intro
In December 2022 we were approached by Daniel Braun to work on building his YouTube channel. One of the key things that Dan mentioned he would like to change is the production quality, we wanted to keep the key feel and vibe of his videos, but really take the production quality up a few notches. His channel was growing quite significantly at the time, but what we wanted to see was- if we paid greater focus to the graphical side of things, a greater focus on the hook, and a greater focus on first minute or so of the video, could we improve the audience retention, view duration and so on, hoping that in-so-doing, the algorithm would boost the content quite significantly and that we would in turn see a greater impact on viewership,subscriptions and the channel as a whole. A major goal as well with this partnership was to set out a healthy workflow with the videos so that Daniel would be able to give greater focus to other areas of his business.
In our internal discussions one of the things we wanted to happen, was as we changed the production side of things, we’d be able to see a marked audience response, one of our consistent goals when we start on projects with new clients is to up the quality of the content so much that’s it’s almost impossible for the audience not to notice it. We really wanted to set a standard with the content that would not only be visually impressive, but also carry through the narrative of the videos in a way that wouldn’t disrupt the content itself, or the message of the content.
Approach
We set out in the first month to establish a visually consistent identity that viewers would be able to recognize, but something that would also be visually distinguishable from our work for other clients. One of our other major goals is, as always, to set up a solid workflow and schedule for content so that we could make sure to stay on track with video projects and make sure that if we have a timeline for a particular video, we’re able to stick to it.
In terms of the post-production side, one of our major goals was to make sure that we established a few clear principles in the content.
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A clear hook on every video - Including fast-moving visuals, solid complexity, and a visually consistent theme.
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Branding - We wanted to establish a colorscape and visual scheme that would result in viewers being immediately able to recognize that this was a ‘Dan Braun’ video.
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Cutting the fluff - We want to keep videos moving fast, engagement is absolutely key in the YouTube space in the modern era, and so we wanted to tighten up the rough cut as much as possible, making sure that all of the relevant information was present, and none more.
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Pacing - In the same way that a great movie isn’t monotoned in it’s pacing, it has a flow, and certain sections of a movie that are more emotive will carry with them a certain pace, we wanted to make sure as well that our videos weren’t just ‘one-note’ and that they had breakers, and areas in which the viewer could be re-engaged to a viewer. The way I like to put it is like this, let’s say you’re watching the movie Titanic, and every scene has the super emotional soundtrack and general pacing as in the scene where Rose and Jack are stranded in freezing water, the movie would be terrible, right? We wanted to make sure our content, even though very different in nature, still paid attention to these important filmmaking principles.
Challenges
One of the issues we faced along the road was making sure that we could maintain this very high level of production, and still make sure that the content was being produced within the weekly timeframe allowed, the audience immediately loved the change in editing and responded incredibly but the videos were quite long and so we had a few challenges with making sure we could initiate and sustain a consistent workflow producing awesome videos.
To combat this we had a few discussions with our team to set up a consistent workflow and make sure to communicate that with Daniel to ensure we could set up a solid system and workflows to ensure clarity, consistency and communication.
Over time this has paid off and we’re in a better place now in our workflows, and although throughout our partnership we didn’t miss any deadlines in particular, we definitely felt the pressure at times and had to work overtime on a few occasions to ensure deadlines could be met, but working on our processes internally and with Daniel, we improved our workflows and in turn have a much more stable week-to-week workflow.
750,000 Average Views Monthly
Engagement was up
Subscribers were up
Results
From the start of the partnership in January of 2023 through to now, the results have been immediately, at the start of our relationship, Dan’s channel was at about 55K subscribers or so and in just a few months it has come in close on doubling in terms of subscriptions, from 55K through to 87K. In terms of the average views per month, in the 4 months prior to our partnership the channel was averaging at just under 500,000 views per month, and in the 4 months since it has averaged over 750,000 views per month. Many of the videos vastly exceeded average viewership statistics as well, with some going relatively viral, one video in particular gathering nearly 200,000 views in the last month or so.
The audience has also responded exceedingly positively to our partnership. We’ve received comments on the production quality from his audience on nearly every video we’ve produced so far, with some videos being almost dominated by comments on how good the editing is. You can see some of those comments below…
Here are also a few images of some of the visual design we sought to incorporate into the production side of his channel.
In the short time that we’ve had the privilege of partnering with Dan we’ve seen some really awesome progress on the channel, a super sweet increase in monthly viewership and probably the most positive audience feedback we’ve had to a partnership. We’re really grateful to him for trusting us in this process, he makes absolutely epic content as well in the finance niche on YouTube if you would like to learn how to make more of your money, and learn more about how to handle your finances as well.
We’re looking forward to seeing what the next few months and hopefully years ahead will look like, but in the meantime, it’s been awesome seeing the growth so far.
