Last week on January 23rd 2019 the Burger King social media team started liking influencer Tweets from 2009 and 2010. They liked three of Casey's tweets and here was his response.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">why is Burger King liking my 8 year old tweets? <a href="https://t.co/q8xL1S23NG">pic.twitter.com/q8xL1S23NG</a>&mdash; Casey Neistat (@CaseyNeistat) <a href="https://twitter.com/CaseyNeistat/status/1088235837089898497?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 24, 2019</a></blockquote>

At the time of this Tweet he did not know that this was a trick Burger King was using to get influencers to give them free publicity and this single Tweet got over 13,000 likes. The truth was Burger King was using many influencers for a launch campaign. They are reintroducing funnel cake fries.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">some things from 2010 are worth revisiting—like your old tweets. and funnel cake fries. get them now for a limited time.&mdash; Burger King (@BurgerKing) <a href="https://twitter.com/BurgerKing/status/1088244260820975616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 24, 2019</a></blockquote>

Shortly after that the truth came out from an article from Complex titled "

the truth on why Burger King was liking your old tweets

". Here is Casey's response video where he claims that Burger King Exploited him.

On one hand you could say that Burger King used shady practices to get buzz about a new product launch. But on the other Casey took full advantage of this situation and tells Burger King to work with him for charity.

Infact they responded and seem to have agreed to his terms

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">sup <a href="https://twitter.com/CaseyNeistat?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CaseyNeistat</a>, we’re ready to meet your “suggestions.&quot; slide into our DMs real quick. <a href="https://t.co/PjIuwyWtGl">pic.twitter.com/PjIuwyWtGl</a>&mdash; Burger King (@BurgerKing) <a href="https://twitter.com/BurgerKing/status/1090331472035282945?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 29, 2019</a></blockquote>

No matter your opinion on the matter this all happened from a brilliant social media team. We are not saying what they did was the right thing but it did gain attention and start something bigger. For example we are blogging about Burger King and Casey on a Tuesday.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Man in sunglasses and red jacket making a gesture outside a Burger King restaurant at night

Burger King created a shady social media campaign last week that has gained a ton of attention and upset a lot of social media influencers.

Did Burger King Exploit Casey Neistat or did Casey Neistat Exploit Burger King?

Curious which analytics you should be focusing on in the coming months to help grow your channel? Look no further — here are the top 5 analytics to get you more views and subscribers on YouTube in 2019.

Note: In order to follow along you’ll need to access the new YouTube Studio beta. If you’re still on Creator Studio Classic, you'll see a big blue “YOUTUBE STUDIO BETA” link in the top-left-hand corner. Click there and you'll instantly see a radically different analytics page.

The first analytic we want to look at is click-through rate. Put simply, your click-through rate is the number of times somebody clicks on one of your thumbnails or titles from the total number of times it's been seen.

So if three people see your video and one of them chooses to watch it, that’s a click-through rate essentially of 33.3%.

In the YouTube Studio beta, you can see the impressions and click-through rates for the past 28 days by simply navigating to “Analytics” from the dashboard and then clicking on “Reviewers.”

You can also go to different cards in the YouTube analytics and look at a breakdown of click-through rates. So if I click on Top Videos, for example, it will list the click-through rate for individual videos as well.

Now if you’re wondering why you should care about your click-through rate, here are three key reasons:

Every single analytic from your YouTube channel trickles down from click-through rate. People have to actually click on your thumbnail to watch your content before you can gain traction with other analytics such as watchtime, subscribers, comments, and all the rest of that good stuff.

Viewers judge videos by their thumbnails just as readers judge books by their covers, so it's really important to have a good first impression. Your click-through rate represents intrigue — of topic, thumbnail or title. For example, recently we covered the subscriber rate of PewDiePie vs. T-Series. Because it was a very intriguing topic at the time, and we used very targeted keywords and colorful thumbnails, our click-through rate for that particular topic went through the roof.

An important to remember about click-through rate is it’s not an exact science. I often hear people say between 2% and 10% is a “good” click-through rate, but I think it’s better to focus simply on improving your click-through rate.

Click-through rates vary from video topic to video topic, and it's heavily influenced by where you are simply in the order of suggested videos and search pages. If you're at the top of a search page, you can have a terrible thumbnail but a high click-through rate simply because of the prime real estate.

Don't get too caught up comparing your click-through rate versus somebody else's. Look at your click-through rate, and aim to improve it one or two percentage points over 2019 — that will bring in a significant number of views.

Channel analytics can give you some insight into average view duration, but a more accurate approach is look at audience retention on individual videos.

To do this, click “Videos” along the left-hand nav. Click on the video that you want to investigate and you’ll see audience retention.

Mouse over the graph and you'll see the audience retention at a specific point in the video, or click on a point and then press play. Doing so will allow you to see the audience retention alongside the video in real-time, giving you clues to investigate drops and spikes in retention.

And if you’re thinking that watchtime is the ultimate analytic king on YouTube and not audience retention, consider that YouTube tends to favor content with more than 50% audience retention. So whether your videos are two minutes long, four minutes long or six minutes long, aim first to make your content better to improve audience retention, and then start to think about making longer videos if that's what you want to do with your content to get more watchtime.

Each individual video has likes and dislikes, and 

 has a funky little tool that turns these metrics into a Likes to Dislikes Ratio.

But what if you want this for your entire channel?

Well they do in the form of YouTube recommended content. When viewers watch your content and enjoy it, they generally watch for longer, and YouTube loves this.

When YouTube loves your content, they want to share it with more people. That means putting it on the homepage, Browse Features and the suggested videos on watch pages — and the more you can push this line into the orange, the more YouTube is doing all the hard work for you.

Rather than people having to search to find your content or find it through the subscription feeds, they're finding it in random places because YouTube wants to share your content with a wider audience.

So how do you manipulate this magic formula to get it to work for you? Engaging thumbnails, intriguing titles — which are then clicked onto — increased watchtime on your content and, as we mentioned, getting above 50% with your audience retention.

For example, take a look at vidIQ’s September analytics below. Notice the 2.5 million impressions, 27.8% of which came from YouTube recommending our content.

Now take a look at vidIQ’s analytics for October when the T-Series vs. PewDiePie subscriber rates was in full flow.

Look at the radical change here: 17 million impressions, and YouTube was recommending our content way more, especially on homepages.

We were feeding YouTube exactly what they wanted and so they responded by sharing it with a much wider audience.

I may be missing something here in the new analytics dashboard, but I can't find a good way to show subscribers gained from videos, so we're going old school here.

Navigate to Creator Studio Classic, click on “Subscribers” and then “YouTube watch page”. This will show you all the videos that are converting viewers into subscribers.

Since there is no analytic that tracks trust, tracking subscribers gained is the next best thing. Think about it, why else would someone subscribe to your channel unless they trust you — trust you to entertain, educate or emotionally impact you.

People who subscribe to your channel from a video watch page usually do it because they’ve experienced a light bulb moment — something that instinctively and instantly drives them to click that button.

 you can look at subs gained a lot quicker than through YouTube analytics through the subs gained column on our channel audit.

If you click on “View More”, you can see all of the videos that are driving viewers to turn into subscribers. It's almost like your trust column.

We also have click-through rate, audience retention, YouTube recommended content, and subscribers gained.

We said earlier that gaining subscribers through your videos is like building trust with your audience. Gaining comments, likes and dislikes through your videos is building engagement — another really important facet of YouTube.

Strictly speaking, YouTube doesn't track engagement rate, but the vidIQ channel audit tool does. Use it to see which videos are generating conversation or whether they're polarizing in terms of how many people react to it with likes versus dislikes.

Astonishingly here, we have one video with 68% engagement rate, but that's because we were having a little bit of fun with YouTube premieres.

In terms of engagement rates, we also want to look at the finer points as well. If we scroll down the channel audit page, we can look at how often the end screens are clicked on — you know, those boxes right at the end of videos.

As a final thought on engagement, don’t forget the Community tab if you have access to it.

Use it to ask your audience what video you should make next, collect general feedback or start a conversation. You might be surprised by the response. In fact, we’ve found that some of our posts are getting more feedback from the videos themselves.

All of these analytics are super important, but if you don’t actually do something with them then you’re missing the point. Remember: Doing the same thing over and expecting different results is a sign of insanity.

Our challenge to you is simple: Act on the data you’re getting from YouTube and 

 and good luck in growing your channel in 2019!

Like to dislike ratio showing 306 likes and 9 dislikes with 97% positive rating

Video creators have access to A TON of analytics, but which ones should you prioritize to get more views and subscribers? Dive into the top 5 vidIQ-approved analytics and grow your YouTube channel fast.

How to Get More Views and Subscribers with YouTube Analytics

To kick off 2019, we've got 10 practical resolutions to help you get more views, more subscribers and ultimately grow your channel.

The YouTube channel banner is essentially an advertising billboard for your channel. Ensure it demonstrates to visitors:

What you do on your channel Why you do it Why you’re the person to do it (authority and passion)

Your YouTube channel banner should be consistent with the branding, colour and design of the video thumbnails. And don’t forget to make sure it’s mobile friendly, so the edges don’t get cut off.

2. Write a compelling channel description

The channel description in the YouTube About section is what visitors will read when they search and find your channel. Think about writing your channel description as if you were writing a tweet of 140 characters — people have very short attention spans, so it should be clear and concise.

Keep in mind, too, that when people first visit your channel, chances are they’re more interested in what’s in it for them. Avoid self-indulgent biographies and instead focus on what your channel can do for your audience. A simple way to check yourself is to search how many times “you” or “your” appears in the channel description. Take a peek at the example below from vidIQ’s About page:

Bonus points for applying the same principles to your video descriptions, too. Your audience can always read the first couple of lines, so make them count.

3. Develop and apply consistent design to everything

A proper style guide will ensure consistency across your entire channel and all the elements within it. Define your fonts, colors, logos and brand images, and keep them all in one place to apply to your channel art, thumbnails, video intros and even the lower thirds, like this one:

4. Make your channel welcoming to visitors

Think of your channel as the front room of your home or your place of business and you as the gracious host.

An effective way to create a welcoming channel to new visitors is to include a dedicated channel trailer or use a high-converting video as your channel trailer, sure to increase your subscriber count.

You should also consider creating a playlist that shows off your best content and use it to introduce your audience to your channel. Putting the most recent uploads playlist near the top will let your visitors know your channel is still active and posting on a consistent basis.

5. Engage your audience as much as possible

One of the mistakes many video creators make is to ask questions at the end of a video. By that time you've lost a significant portion of your audience — just take a look at your audience retention to see for yourself.

Asking your visitors a question at the beginning, the middle and the end of a video — maybe even including a voting poll as well — really will help keep your audience engaged along with the content.

On the bottom right corner of your video is your branding watermark, and it's a call to action for viewers to subscribe to your channel. In order for it to achieve its objective, it should say exactly what it does.

Rather than using your channel logo, instead use something that invites viewers to subscribe to your channel.

In the example above from the vidIQ channel, you’ll see a very simple ‘SUBSCRIBE’ button. Once we switched to this graphic, our click rate on this button increased more than 500% almost instantly, which you can see in the graph below.

, or for more information on how to create your own and set it up on YouTube watch our video,

 How to Add a YouTube Subscribe Button that Gets Results in 2018!

7. Reference your own related YouTube content

Did you notice what we did in that last resolution? We referenced our own related content to encourage the audience to stick around in the vidIQ YouTube universe.

Always plug your own content and directly reference it on screen. And remember, the more stupidly overenthusiastic, the better.

You work is not finished when you press publish. If your audience is taking the time to comment on your videos, respect their time and energy by replying to every single one.

If you get too many comments, block off an hour a day in your calendar for responding. You could even pin the best comments to your videos, or pin your own comments to continue the conversation in the comments section, like we’ve done in the example below.

If replying to every comment feels overwhelming, remind yourself that the comments section is where connections begin, which could evolve into collaborations, brand deals, friendships and more.

The YouTube Community tab is available to all channels with over 1,000 subscribers and can be a huge engagement opportunity if you know how to use it right. In fact, you’ll often find that a well-crafted question or voting poll gets as much engagement, if not more, than your videos.

For more information on how to use it, check out our dedicated video, 

How To Build a YouTube Audience Through The Community Tab!

This last resolution sounds really easy, but believe me, when you're programmed to say canned phrases like “That’s it for this one,” or “Hope you enjoyed the video,” or “Thanks for watching,” at the end of every single video, it can be a hard habit to drop.

As soon as you say things like that, the audience knows that the content has effectively finished and they leave the video in droves. Take a peek at your audience retention — you’ll likely see an immediate drop.

For your next video, I want to challenge you to scrap the canned phrases and instead promote related content or just do a hard finish.

What’s your number one YouTube resolution for 2019? Let us know on 

YouTube video thumbnails and titles focused on increasing views and channel growth tips.

Whether you’re a fan of New Year’s resolutions or not, there’s always room for improvement when it comes to growing your YouTube channel.

How to Get More Views and Subscribers FAST on YouTube

We asked many amazing creators what it takes to get more views and subscribers in 2019 and this is what they had to say:

Andrew LakeMaker: Spend a good 3-4 hours per thumbnail, they are that important.

Evan Carmichael: Better understand your data to come up with new video series.

Spankie Valentine: Focus on the artistic and creative process.

Derral Eves: Data does not lie. use data to drive decissions.

Sean Cannel: Master your craft by keeping to the basics, leveling up and learning as much as you can.

Ernest: Strive for higher audience retention and sharing.

Brian G. Johnson: Keep on striving for perfection even though that's not possible.

YouTube creators discussing platform trends and tips for success in 2019 with vidIQ logo.

Want to know how to crush your YouTube channel? Hear from many of the best.

How to Get More YouTube Views & Subscribers

Need ideas on making your next video, here are 30:

Start talking to camera and see what happens

Try to add a cliff hanger at the end or beginning

Double your video length and see what happens

Or shorten your video and see if that changes the pace and tone of the video

Man pointing at glowing light bulb next to YouTube icon and text "Video Ideas"

Struggling to come up with content? Here are 30 YouTube ideas for ANY channel!

Want More YouTube Views? 30 YouTube Video Ideas To Kickstart ANY Channel

How do you get your first 100 subscribers? We've got more than 10 tips and suggestions to help you get there. Getting started on YouTube and grinding up to 100 subscribers can feel like the hardest hurdle to overcome. Where do you start with so much to think about? We've come up with some awesome suggestions to help kick-start your channel and think more like a YouTuber and less like someone chucking videos randomly onto the internet!

Man pointing at YouTube subscribe button with 100 subscribers and vidIQ logo background

Getting started on YouTube and grinding up to 100 subscribers can feel like the hardest hurdle to overcome.

How to Get 100 YouTube Subscribers FAST: Creator Tips for Success

Can you guess what question we get asked the most? It’s pretty obvious: How do I get more views on YouTube?

The answer, however, is far from obvious; unless you break it down into a hundred jigsaw pieces. And what jigsaw pieces do you look for first? The corners of course.

So let’s look at four crucial pieces of the YouTube puzzle What Do YOU Love to Talk About? YouTube knows what its audience wants, so you need to think like YouTube. Let’s say your passion is videogames. Be specific. If you love Fortnite or Call of Duty or Fifa 18, make sure to focus on that topic.

The more passionate you are about something, the more you know about it and the more confident you will be creating and sharing content about it.

Passion is an invisible vibe, energy and presence that your audience can always see.

Who Should Be Watching and Why? Don’t stop at just your favourite game, film, beauty product or superhero either. Dive deeper. Popular topics attract thousands of video creators, so you need to provide the audience with something they can’t get anywhere else.

Ask yourself this question: who should be watching and why? If you can’t answer that question then your audience won’t understand or (worst still) won’t care about your content. If someone else can answer those two questions better that’s where the audience will go.

This is your target audience and your value proposition and you should be able to sum it up in a sentence. For example: Helping Video Creators Get More Views In Less Time.

A ‘niche’ is an interest that appeals to a small, specialized section of the audience. Let’s say you buy the latest iPhone and you want to do a general video review on it. OK great, but the chances are there is a tech channel with millions of subscribers that has more resources to produce something in a shorter time frame to a wider audience.

But is that massive tech channel interested in EVERY aspect of the iPhone? Probably not, they will have another big phone release to worry about. But you? You could have a special interest in how the camera works or the best apps for productivity or how to record the screen. The chances are, if you are interested in something, there will be an audience out there who is also interested in the same thing.

This is your niche. While there may be millions of people interested in an iPhone, there may only be a few thousand interested in recording the iPhone screen, yet still passionate enough about it to create guides and tutorials that spread a message of value better than anyone else.

Dominate Your Niche and Become the Authority With passion, a target audience, a value proposition and a niche you know better than anyone else, you will start to build an audience.

Usually, there comes a point where one video outperforms everything else you’ve published before: 2x, 5x, 10x, it becomes your viral moment.

When this happens, go all in on follow up content. YouTube is telling you: you have something of value and we want to share it with more people. Your stock rising, your authority is gaining momentum, we ALL want to see more from you about something you are passionate about and can trust you with.

Try this: search for ‘Record iPhone Screen’ and you may see a very familiar vidIQ face appearing over and over again. Who knew such a niche could bring in so many views?

Channel success stories usually start with a niche that builds trust between the YouTuber and their audience. They then take that audience on a journey through more topics that stretch that authority into new, larger audiences.

Try this: do a YouTube search for ‘How Big Is’. This search term is dominated by a YouTuber called ColdFusion. The channel was already successful with tech videos that got 10,000s views. The ‘How Big Is’ video brought in millions of views and now ColdFusion is the authority on the phrase.

Person holding a sparkling red heart decoration against a red door background

Youtube Always Starts With Something You Love and Ends with Something Your Audience Trusts You With.

How to Get More YouTube Views? Passion and Authority

Here are 10 ways to reach the largest audience with the most impact:

Promote in the first 24 hours to get velocity or what we like to call View Per Hour

Share a playlist link, not a video link so that people can watch more of your videos

Share on other social media platforms like Linkedin and Facebook groups

Upload videos to Facebook directly using our vidIQ tool

Use your email list to push your YouTube channel

Use Incase you missed it posts on social platforms to remind people to watch

Man with social media icons for YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and email on blue background

You've made a great YouTube video, now you need to share it.

10 Awesome Ways to Promote Your YouTube Videos for FREE

So you can monetize your content. That's a question being asked by many video creators. So here's 10 practical tips you can start using today to help grow your channel!

Be visual and exciting when asking people to subscribe

Use the branding watermark using a red subscribe button

Put the subscribe button in the endscreen

When sharing your channel use the auto subscribe URL

Pin a subscribe link to the top of your comments

Add vaule to other channels to increase your audience

Make sure your channel page is optimized with a great banner, trailer and sections

Man thinking with hand on chin, YouTube subscribe button, and vidIQ logo in corner

How to get 1000 Subscribers on YouTube so you can monetize your content: that's a question being asked by many video creators. So here are 10 practical tips you can start using today to help grow your channel!

How to Get 1000 Subscribers on YouTube: Creator Tips

This video breaks down how to get 4000 hours of watch time on YouTube:

Breakdown this into 20,000 minutes a month

Accpet that it takes a long time to grow on YouTube

Use the vidIQ real time stats bar to see how your doing

Man pointing at clock showing 4000 hours for YouTube monetization with dollar sign icon

You now need 4,000 hours of Watch Time and 1,000 subscribers to qualify for monetization on YouTube. Keep reading for tips to achieve those feats.

How to Get 4000 Hours Watch Time on YouTube So You Can Monetize Your Videos

Here's 10 tips on how to use playlists to get more views on YouTube!

Use keywords and phrases like you would with a title

Use exact phrase keywords on your playlist

Always share a playlist URL not a video URL

You can add videos from other channels in your playlist

Man in vidIQ shirt points to "PLAYLISTS" text with YouTube and growth arrow icons.

YouTube Playlists: you probably use them but do you know just how powerful they are?

Get More Views With 10 Playlists Tips

Build a better community, save time responding to comments and use YouTube's secret comment weapon! All of which is part of growing your channel to gain my subscribers and better serve your audience with the message you want to spread.

Here are 10 YouTube Tips to improve engagement:

React to comments by giving a thumbnails up and heart button

Use the pin comment for content you want people to see

Go through the spam tab to make sure real comments were not put in there

Man whispering tips with text comment tips, YouTube, like, and heart icons on blue background

Here are 10 YouTube Tips to improve engagement, build a better community, save time responding to comments and use YouTube's secret comment weapon! All of which is part of growing your channel to gain more subscribers and better serve your audience with the message you want to spread.

How To Get More Views on YouTube