For a long time we published Agape videos that got 300 or 400 views. That's the story of most content: it takes a long time to find out what works.
Then I decided to do a full breakdown of the build. It covered twelve months in 35 minutes, with a progress bar to show the time compressing. I'd seen packaging like that on another YouTube video that had done well, and I liked it, so I tried it on ours.
It became our breakthrough piece, with about 135,000 views. Our other build videos sit at numbers like 70,000 and 26,000. What strikes me is that it's the same guy talking and the same material. The difference was how we packaged it and the way the time was compressed.
That's what I'd test first when a video goes nowhere. I'd look at what's working in another part of YouTube and ask how it could suit my industry, before deciding the idea itself is the problem.
I can't say the progress bar made the difference by itself. It's one video, and we'd already been filming the build for about two years. But it changed what I try first. If a piece has a few hundred views, I check the packaging before I give up on the idea.
Look through your last few videos that went nowhere and find a format doing well somewhere else. Use it on the next one and change nothing else.
