The YouTube Formula

13Content Is King

May 26, 1980.

That date will always be seared in my mind because something changed me that day, and I haven't been the same since.

This chapter is about moments that change people. It's what I am the most passionate about in my work—figuring out how our message or “content” can make the biggest impact on others. Some of the greatest experts in rhetoric have changed the world, both good and bad, from Aristotle to Hitler to Gandhi, with their messaging. Every interaction we have in every facet of our lives comes down to getting a message across. Messaging is a huge part of our YouTube strategy. It helps us get people to do what we want them to do and meet our success goals.

On May 26, 1980, I was six years old. My two uncles had gone to see a new movie that had opened a few days earlier, and they loved it so much that they needed a reason to spend money to see it again. So they asked if they could take their kid nephew Derral. What a great idea! We got to the theater and found our seats, and the title sequence began its trademark Star Wars crawl up the screen. It was The Empire Strikes Back—the second film in the original Star Wars trilogy. Now, I don't say this lightly, but The Empire Strikes Back is THE BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME THAT EVER EXISTED IN THE WHOLE OF HUMANITY. This was content at its finest … I knew it even at the age of six. The cinematography and the story were like magic to me. But there was that one epic moment in the movie, you all know it now, ...