Building A Deep & Wide YouTube Channel For a Content-Centric Algorithm

For many years, I used to monitor my chronological subscription feed to see what new videos had come out from those I subscribed to. I'd then either watch it immediately or add it to one of my watch later lists.

Eventually, I was following too many channels and this became unmanageable. Plus, I've got over three thousand videos on my watch later list.

So how does one navigate a place where there is more content to watch than the capacity to filter and watch that content?

We need an algorithm to help us sort through the volume of videos.

And this is the YouTube opportunity and the future I'm working towards.

In this video, I'm going to talk about this content-centric algorithm, what YouTube is strategically accomplishing at the highest level, what a deep and wide channel means, and how I'm building this type of channel for the future.

A Content-Centric Algorithm

One of the reasons I was always attracted to Twitter over Facebook, was because of how it was topical. On Facebook, it's relational first and topical second. On Twitter, it was the opposite. Connections are made because of a shared passion.

Twitter, now X, was the leading edge of this trend.

TikTok pushed this idea further with short-form video content where the content was delivered to the person who wanted to see that content regardless of follower count. Small accounts were blowing up because their content struck a nerve and the algorithm was willing to serve it up.

So, while a connection and authority can play a part and identifying my next watch, ultimately my next best watch is what I want to watch most now.

And a content-centric Algorithm is a helpful tool to guide me toward that next watch.

When it fails, I go to my watch later list. But with thousands of videos on my Watch Later list, there's no easy way to figure out what the best thing is to watch on that list.

YouTube's Algorithm suggestions incorporate videos on my watchlist, surfacing the videos it thinks I'm most likely to watch next. This is great and helpful.

The better YouTube's Algorithm gets, the less we'll need a chronological feed and watch later list.

And this is the opportunity.

So, What's YouTube Doing?

How would you educate the entire world for free?

Solving that problem is what I think YouTube is doing.

I was born in 1984, now 40 years old, and over the last few decades I've wondered about that problem.

If we were going to educate the world for free, we'd find the best way to teach each topic, and the best teachers for that topic and create that type of teaching content.

We would have the best teachers teaching in the best ways for free for people around the globe. And the best of the best would rise to the top.

Done right, someone could go from kindergarten through college. And from college in any vocational direction.

In many ways, that's what the internet has done for us. But more specifically, YouTube.

YouTube has found a way to build an ecosystem where this problem is solved. And this ecosystem involves students learning things for free and teachers earning an income, through advertising (and other forms of income for those that leverage the platform.)

This is the opportunity.

Deep and Wide. A Variety Channel.

Where does that leave you and me now?

Out of all the things I could watch, I want to watch the thing I most want to watch now. I need the algorithm to help me figure out what that is.

The algorithms of the future will be focused on connecting an audience with the next best piece of content for them. It filters out everything that's being created that I wouldn't want to see and shows everything I don't want to see.

This means that the volume of content I make is not the most important. It's relevance. But volume helps us become relevant to more people.

So if I publish 10 videos on 10 different topics, I may only have 1 relevant video for 10 different people each. But if the algorithm is working well, that means my other 9 videos will be invisible to the other 9 people.

This means I can publish a ton of content and the audience will only see the relevant content to them.

That's our opportunity.

I've heard many people say, to only create relevant content for one of the audiences. Create 10 videos for that one audience (instead of 10 videos for 10 different audiences). That's known as niching down.

If Niching down, was the only way to be successful, why is YouTube successful? It has not niched down as a platform. It's because it's doing the very strategy I'm exploring here in this video.

YouTube can facilitate the creation of 10 videos for a million different audiences.

So there is no realistic way to reach that high of a number, but we can land somewhere in between one niche and 10 million based on the resources we each have available.

So if this premise is correct, we have an alternative to niching down. It is to create 100 videos with ten videos each for ten different audiences... or some other variation of this.

You could start with one niche, build it out, and then add another. Or you could contribute to them systematically or organically, like round robbing across the topics. You could add a niche or stop adding to anyone at any point.

In the end, it won't matter how many videos you publish across any number of topics because people will mostly only see the content that is relevant to them, now. They'll be shielded from everything else. That also means you don't need different channels to post different types of content.

That's the opportunity I see and why I'm building a channel for this content-centric paradigm.

The Deep & Wide Structure of This Channel

I'm coming into the YouTube world with a history of content creation outside of it.

I've been an entrepreneur my whole Life. I've been blogging since 2014. I've published two books and am close to finishing my third since 2017. I've been podcasting since 2020. And this year, I'm taking YouTube seriously. I'm leveraging all of these foundational stones to build a channel for what I see as the future.

Here's what that vision and mission look like for me.

My personal mission is to share life and my vision is that we're thriving together. The antithesis of my vision is survival in Isolation. That's a dark place I've been and I don't want that for others. For those that are there, I want to invite them towards the vision and away from the anti-vision.

My podcast, Share Life, is named after my mission statement. The Tagline is Stories and Systems to live better and work smarter.

On my blog, I've grouped the content I've created into our four broad buckets.

First, it's about personal development and growing as individuals. Second, it's about growing our business and developing our vocation. Third, it's about leading our community and shaping our society. And lastly, it's about inspirational stories to motivate others.

As I create content for my YouTube channel I'll be creating across these four categories.

I'll be drawing upon my library of existing content while also creating new and exclusive content just for YouTube.

And the formats of video types I'll be creating and publishing will vary. There is no better time to take risks and experiment while also learning the YouTube system and its limits than where I am now.

My goal in 2025 is to get monetized, hitting the 4k watch hours and 1k subscribers as quickly as possible, but once that's accomplished, I'm open to how I pace my YouTube activity beyond that milestone.

I see this YouTube opportunity before me, and I'm excited to step into it and figure out how to make the most of it.

How about you?

How are you seeing and acting on the opportunity?