Blogging vs YouTube in 2026? | Ep. 85

Discover how Andrea, a home decor creator, uses YouTube and TikTok in surprising ways to grow her brand! In this episode, we dive into her journey from blogging to video, her unique approach to content, and how she attracts clients with long and short form videos. Want to learn how to stand out as a solo business owner? Tune in and get inspired by Andrea’s story!

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Transcript

What you're about to hear is a very interesting conversation with Andrea, one of my clients inside of Video Brand Academy, and the reason why I find this so interesting is because Andrea has a home decor channel. She has more than just a YouTube channel. She's utilizing another social media platform in a very, very surprising way. And so I want you to hear about this because I think it's really easy to put each social media platform kind of into a box and do what all the gurus say to do and like make sure everything is just so she's doing something very different with YouTube and with TikTok. So this is my conversation with Andrea. Let's get into it. Hey, Andrea, thank you for coming onto the Video Brand Infusion podcast. I'm excited to chat with you because you've been a member of Video Brand Academy for a while, and you have an interesting niche, but you're doing long form and short form content on other platforms than just YouTube. So I wanna pick your brain to kind of see how you approach content creation for your niche and what's working for you right now on YouTube. So why don't we start with why did you even start YouTube? How long has it been, what made you think to even do YouTube? Well, my blog died. I mean, so like the helpful content update killed my blog, and it was good. It wasn't a bad thing actually, but then I was like, well, what am I gonna do next? I did a couple of videos like my YouTube channel. It's years old, but I hardly posted anything on it. And so I thought, I'm just gonna really try to hit that hard because I thought it would be more Google search proof, even though it is, it's Google search traffic still. Mm-hmm. Um, but at least I felt like it was a way to compete with people who were just, anybody can write something, and now especially people can generate a hundred articles in a day and how are you gonna keep up with that? And so I decided that I would try to figure out YouTube and really master it, which is when I found your, I think it was a 90 day challenge, but I think when I did it, it was 30 days. So your blog and your YouTube channel is like, did you switch niches or was it all the same niche? My blog was really focused around keyword posts. Like my biggest post was an article about how high to put your bathroom mirror. So it was really specific search terms with a lot of images. And so then what I did was decide, okay, first of all, that really isn't that fun to write about so then I started to reevaluate like, what do I really wanna talk about? And so I'm horrible at DIY so I don't wanna do that. And I had a big group of fellow bloggers and we all would talk and I'm not good at that. So I decided to go back to school basically, and that helped me kind of pivot a little bit. And so I went and took a design class where you had to like turn in homework and get your projects graded. It was New York School of Design, but you could do it all virtually. So I did that and then that sort of helped me pivot to talking about interior design, which is what I really like talking about, but I couldn't figure out how to do it necessarily in a blog post. So it was much easier to talk about it in video. Okay, so when you approached YouTube, like your topics for YouTube, were those keyword topics like they were for the blog, or was it a totally different approach? Yes, they're keyworded, but like for example, I do a lot of posts about IKEA because people search for IKEA. So I do things where like I go and I look at, here's my top five couches at IKEA, and I do video inside IKEA and talk about what I like about the different things, which ones are junk. I did the same thing for dining chairs at IKEA. Uh, so I've done a lot of IKEA videos and those always get big views. But I'll also do like, a lot of search terms around Ralph Lauren and home decor, so I did a video about that. They are keyworded, but some of them are not. It just depends. I've really tried to not do the same thing over and over again, even though, except for IKEA. I've done that one multiple times. So do you go to IKEA and record in IKEA? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like do you talk to the camera in IKEA or do you just record like I voiceover. I just do a lot of B-roll and I do a voiceover when I get back, 'cause that's too embarrassing. I know, I know. I've never been a public like talk to the camera person. I just can't do it. I would much rather record B-roll, do a voiceover later, and I think then the video comes out better because you're not like, I would just be rambling if I was talking to the camera. Yeah, because you don't have any kind of script or anything. I mean, it is time consuming to do that, but I did the same thing for, I did a big video on recliners because a lot of people that have been contacting me, their husbands really want a recliner, so I did like a big review of nice looking recliners. And the same thing there. I just went to like Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel and West Elm, and I sat in all the recliners and I filmed B-roll. A lot of people I think find me through that video. So when you had your blog, what was your intention with the blog and has it changed with YouTube in terms of why you grow an audience and like how does it generate revenue? Is it different from the blog to YouTube? How does that side of it work for you? I think the blog pretty much ended, so I barely post. When I first started, I tried to post the transcripts as an article. Oh. But the blog earns revenue through ads. I'm on Mediavine, and through affiliate income, 'cause I have product links, but it wasn't that much fun to write it. I'm having so much more fun with the YouTube, and I think the main reason is it just took me a while to figure out what I liked doing, and it wasn't writing these articles, I'm not a writer. So really what I liked doing was working with the people one-on-one when I finally figured that out through YouTube. How does that work? How do people find your videos? They approach you to work one-on-one, or how do you get those clients through YouTube? They find my videos and I haven't followed your exact funnel, but I usually in most of my videos mention that I'm a virtual designer and I'll just casually slip in there that when I work with clients and I always have a link to my product in the video. So they'll watch a video and they'll get on my mailing list, 'cause I do have a freebie, which is a floor planning, like a furniture template. So I guess they get on my mailing list, but I don't know whether they're coming to my product from that or directly from a video, 'cause it's linked in all the videos. Do you get a lot of people that download your freebie? I guess that's my only way to get on my mailing list and the only people I'm getting on my mailing list at this point are from YouTube. Okay, so people are finding you on YouTube searching for things like good looking recliners for my living room and things like that. And they may or may not be on your mailing list, but they know you work with people one-on-one. Is it like you're virtually helping people design rooms in their home? Well, yes, and I've come up with lots of different products and I also put my email in the YouTube and people will email me a question like, how big of a rug should I get for this room and here? And so sometimes I'll say, send me an email with the dimensions, and then it morphs into, you know, they'll say, hey, do you work with people? Or you know, and they'll ask me back and forth through email and we'll set something up. But I've also come up with a giant amount of products. Like someone will say, I need someone to review my floor plan. Do you do that? And I say, yes, I do. And then I'll just make a product and I do it. Yeah, what's the harm? I mean, the worst they can say is that sucked. In which case I give 'em their money back. And so I haven't had anybody do that, but it's been more fun for me to go, I think I could do that. I'm gonna put that out there. Probably my most popular product is just a one hour call where somebody will, in advance, they'll send me the dimensions of their room, and then on the phone I have a floor planning software and we'll do a Zoom call and I'll play with their furniture in the floor plan. That sounds like so much fun. I feel like I could book up your whole calendar just with me, like wanting to brainstorm floor plans. So how do you come up with what topics to create on your YouTube channel? And the reason I'm asking is because you're just shy of 8,000 subscribers, and you've been doing this for a while. Some of your videos have lots of views, 40,000 views on Get the Ralph Lauren Look Without the Million Dollar Home. Love that. I can see why that would have so many views, because that's like a juicy title. That's a juicy hook right there. So how do you come up with ideas? How do you even know what to post on your channel? Well, I did use the spiderweb technique when I started, so I mean, I don't like to plan too far out because I feel like that stifles my creativity. So I like to just think, what do I feel like talking about this week? Then I'll make a video about that. And you know, it's either product focus, like I just did one on rugs because I've done a lot of things about how to buy rugs, how to figure out what size rug. I do a lot of videos about lighting because I mean, so there's the big lighting, you know, I can do furniture reviews. I can talk about difficult floor plans, so I just sort of rotate around to whatever I'm interested in that day. And I just did that Google thing after our call, which I never would've thought that would be any good, or the YouTube AI. And I asked to look at my channel and it gave me some good ideas. Okay. All right. I'm gonna do this right now while we're talking. So, uh, the other day, inside Video Brand Academy, we had a meetup and somebody recommended inside your YouTube studio to go to the AI chatbot in the backend of your YouTube channel. Oh my gosh. So if I say, suggest new video ideas or, yeah, didn't give me a ton either. It gave me three that I said, you know, I generally like to talk about these things. Can you take a look at my channel and suggest some topics that would be good? They're not all great, but you know, the other thing I did was my husband is also a blogger and he did this giant AI query looking at Reddit comments. Ooh. So I did that for my niche and came up with some video post ideas like one about how do you arrange furniture in an open concept? That was something that a lot of people were talking about on Reddit, so I did a video on that. Okay, I got a really good topic for this that Ask Studio just gave me: the zero B-roll strategy, how to make engaging videos fast for lazy entrepreneurs. It's a long title, but that's kind of juicy. I kind of like that. Uh, so, you know, it's interesting, YouTube has had so many different new features, feature updates, things have changed, kind of like on the backend for us creating videos. Do you look at your analytics, aside from playing with the AI tools that they have recently released? What do you look at in the backend of your channel to kind of help you sort of steer what you're doing? I used to really obsessively look at analytics when I was first starting, but then I decided that was really sucking away too much of my time. So I don't look at it that much. I look at views and you know, I respond to comments, but I don't have a long view duration, 'cause after working with you, I definitely started trying to make my videos longer 'cause I was trying to make them more choppy and quick. And I have tried to increase the length because I do look at, I mean like my average view duration's gotta be under three minutes. Mm-hmm. Is, I feel like short, so I look at that, although you know, I've been trying to make videos that are more like eight to 10 minutes instead of five, which was more of what I was making. So what do you do to make your videos longer? I think you shared something about taking your shorter videos and using AI to sort of like add more details to make that video topic longer. I do ask AI to gimme some additional things to discuss. If I've got an outline of a video that I wanna make, and I ask it, what other questions could I address? And I try to film something like that. Yeah, since we are talking about video length, um, I know that you do create short form content, you're kind of popular on TikTok. What goes through your mind, how do you decide this is gonna be YouTube video versus this is gonna be a short form video, and are you just doing short form on TikTok or do you do it on everything? No, I only do it on TikTok 'cause Instagram doesn't do well for me, and I don't make videos for YouTube or TikTok. I use the same video. So my videos on TikTok are like all five minutes or around that length. They're not short. And basically I film my videos for YouTube and then I just edit them a little tighter for TikTok. And I usually put like my B-roll either on the top or the bottom, and my face on the other half. Okay, so really you're not creating short form content really for TikTok. No. You are creating the same video, but like visually editing it so that it kind of fits the screen better, but not editing it down into like a little clip or snippet. If it's like this latest one that I just did, which was three different floor plans, like I'll do a long YouTube video talking about three different open concepts and how we arrange the furniture, and then sometimes I'll make a part two and a part three on TikTok, but those don't ever do very well. So I find sometimes if I just cut out a little bit of the fluff that I leave in on YouTube, because I try to aim for TikTok videos to be around four to five minutes. Yeah. So yeah, a lot of times I don't edit that much of anything. I just rearrange it so it doesn't take me that long. Okay. So how does that work on TikTok? Because your TikTok videos do well. Do all of them do well or is it just kind of sporadic? So it's a little bit like YouTube. And you know what it is, like YouTube because I feel like you can see, you know, likes and comments and people are liking and commenting on really old videos. So it's not that, it's just showing them either they're going to my profile and they're clicking through maybe, or it's resurfacing for people, old videos. I can't, I don't know how it's working. Gotcha. Okay. This is fascinating because it blows my mind that, you know, you're creating long form videos for TikTok, but they're long form videos. So do people like that? Do you feel like people watch the whole video on TikTok? I am sure there's a way to tell, but I'm not looking at their analytics, so I don't know. Um, I feel like people do watch it, I mean, I feel like I'm really bad about asking people how they found me, but I know that people have hired me through TikTok because I've met some of them in person and they tell me that they found me on TikTok. I don't think it probably has the legs that YouTube has for the long term. Mm-hmm. I think it has some potential depending on, you know, I'm not trying to sell any products except for, you know, in fact, I usually clip off the part in my video where I say, if you wanna work with me, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't say that. Oh, so you have that on YouTube, but not on TikTok. I did put it on this latest one, and they flagged it as, are you trying to sell something? And I said, no, and they let it go through. So that's funny. It's kind of like, uh, yeah. This is, uh, marketing on social media. TikTok, get with the program. Well, I don't know if it's 'cause I don't have a commercial account or whatever, but yeah. So I don't usually mention it on there. And I feel like long term YouTube is gonna be where it's at and not TikTok especially, 'cause they keep saying they're gonna get rid of it. Right. I know. It's like, is it going or is it staying? Who even knows. On YouTube do not work for me at all. Okay. And so, but the shorts on YouTube have to be under three minutes, so they would have to be clipped down. Yeah, I think really it has to be a lot shorter. I watch a lot of long videos on TikTok, so that's the only reason why I know they are out there. You know, they are out there. There's viewers out there for them. Wow. That is so incredible. You said your blog died and so you thought, oh, I'll just make YouTube videos, but did you have any hangups about like, oh, I'm not gonna talk to the camera. That sounds weird, or was it easy and natural for you? It's not easy and natural, but I just followed your thing and I just did it anyway, and I was like, I'm just gonna post this because they're gonna suck, but nobody's gonna see 'em anyway. I mean, I see a lot of these people who put all this pressure on themselves to do those first few videos and I thought, who cares? No one is gonna see it. Nobody. Too much analysis paralysis. You just make it and keep going. Yeah. Has it gotten easier over time? Like what has made it easier for you? Repetition for sure. I mean, definitely making more videos makes you better at making videos. Right. And do you script your videos when you, I think I cannot stand that. I do bullet them and you did a lesson on that, which I thought was super helpful. Like I definitely script the hook and that's the only thing I script. And then I just use bullets. So you know what you're gonna say like, you know, like a roundabout what you need to cover, but you're not reading word for word. Right. And sometimes I do like, I'll cut and I'll look over to my computer, what's the next bullet? But sometimes I don't even cut. I just edit that out. Yeah. And so what are you using to edit? I use Final Cut and I have used Descript before. I use Descript sometimes to edit out the spaces and then I'll move it into Final Cut because I find it's way easier to add the B-roll and I have a lot of B-roll 'cause nobody wants to look at my face when I'm talking about interior design there. I've had people comment like, there's too much of your face, you know? Really? Oh, that's funny. Yeah, that's really interesting. How do you handle negative comments like that? Or would you even see that as a negative comment? Like, how do you handle that kind of thing? On YouTube or on TikTok? I usually comment back. I don't hide it because it's engagement, so whatever. Generally I get positive comments, but somebody will be like, you need to fix your hair, or your hair's distracting, or something like that. And I'm just like, well, thanks for tuning in. You know, I just, yeah. Thanks for the feedback. Who cares what they say? The fact that they're commenting is better for me. Exactly. Yeah. So what are you excited about for the next year? YouTube or do you have any big plans or, um, like what are you thinking ahead for the future? I don't have big plans. I just wanna consistently post and because I didn't post at all in December, so my big plans are all around, I think I'm gonna do a big series on different designers. Oh, that's a good idea. I feel like that's good search terms, good keywords there, but also just really interesting for just like the general audience on your channel. Yeah. So. Okay. Interesting. Consistent posting and I gotta figure out a new place to post, 'cause I moved my office home and then I was like, ooh, there's too many people here. I can't do it. Oh yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I try to, um, work on my laptop on the couch and like yesterday, and my daughter comes down and she's like, we're outta mayonnaise. I'm like, okay, thanks. I'll get right on that. Add it to the grocery list, you know, and it's like, I'm working here. So I can understand the whole, like, being home and there's too many people and it's like, you're right there waiting for the distractions to happen. Or the laundry or the grocery. You know, there's a lot of distraction. Yeah, yeah. So you said you just moved your office and where you do your work. So what's your setup like for cameras, lights, editing and all of that? Uh, I don't have a fixed setup, so I have one of those lights with the shadow box. And sometimes I use it, but sometimes I don't. Like if I film in my kitchen, there's a lot of natural light, so I don't use anything. I just put my phone on a tripod and put my mic on and not even sure if my mic works. I feel like it doesn't, but the volume is always so low, so I feel like there's no way it could be working. It's a lapel mic, so I don't have an elaborate setup and I try to film in different places in my house, but my house is old and dark, but people like to see your house. Yeah. I guess if you are in the interior design niche, it really hard. Yeah. Because my family is so messy, so it takes a lot of time just to clean it up. Yeah. I hear you there. Anything else that I didn't ask you about that you wanna share that you think would be helpful for my viewers and listeners? I think being part of the community is big, I always get away from those calls with something that's actionable to do like the little YouTube that gave me a great idea for a video. So I think having a group, I had a blog mastermind and it was really helpful to have other people doing the same thing. So for me, VBA, I am kind of using it like that. Mm-hmm. People are in there making content. You can hear what their ideas are and what problems they're having and how they're fixing it. So for me, that's a big plus. Awesome. Cool. Thank you. Where can people find you? Because I love your content. I don't ever do much interior design, but I like looking at other people talking about it. So where do people find you? I will put a link to your channel, but you, um, tell me where's the best place to connect with you? Oh, YouTube, Design Morsels. I don't know about you, but I didn't know that you could put long form videos on TikTok. I was very surprised to learn that, and it almost made me want to put time and energy into TikTok. I probably won't do that because most of my videos are just kind of talking head like this. They're not as visually interesting as home decor. But I hope you enjoyed this episode with Andrea. She is one of my clients inside of Video Brand Academy. VBA is where I source my podcast interviews from, because I think if I'm inspired by what my clients and students are doing, you will probably be inspired by what they're doing as well. So if you wanna be the newest student of Video Brand Academy and maybe become the next guest on the Video Brand Infusion podcast, I put a link to VBA down in the description below this video, and maybe I'll see you on the inside.