 Hi! My friends call me Lime and I want to help you perform even better in your videos and as we saw in the last episode there are other things than your actual performance that affects how your audience feels about, well, your performance. So let's talk about the meaning of meaningfulness. Let's start off with a model example, a word. Paragon, a person or thing, regarded as a perfect example of a particular quality. Let's start off with a paragon to show you what I mean. This ad sells shoes and we see a text saying that with the right shoes at work you'll have energy left over for other things and everything on this image is there because it gives meaning to the message. We see his work environment, we see his work close, we see the car that he drove to work in, we see the bike that he likes to ride on his spare time, nothing is there by accident. Not even the stickers on the bike. Red Bull is an energy drink and also everything is dirty. Even the sky is dirty except the shoes because that is what they're selling and it doesn't stop there. The picture does everything that it can to make his target audience look up to this guy. The picture is taken in a slightly low angle making him look bigger demanding respect. He has a slightly cocky facial expression and his hands are placed to clearly show a ring on his left ring finger. Nothing, nothing, nothing is there just because it looks good. It's there because it communicates something. With that said and I suspect that a lot of people are going to dislike me saying this but I honestly feel that it needs to be said. Surprisingly huge amount of youtubers have intros like these. Sure they do look nice but first of all they're so common that it's officially a cliche and second of all let's see it for what it actually is. It is just your name bouncing to music. It gives the viewer very little new information if and no I'm not saying that every little detail has to mean something but neither do you want your audience to feel like you're wasting their time with meaningless content. Let me show you another reason that you want to think more about meaning. This is a banner that I made for a Sonic the Hedgehog livestream marathon event and what if I added an image solely because it looks good not caring about whether it's meaningful or not. Do you see what happens? It gets confusing and yes it is an exaggerated example but the point is that ignoring meaning doesn't work in your favor. You don't want anything on your channel or in the background of your videos that makes your audience go what is that thing doing there? Unless it's a joke. So your challenge is to put more thought behind the content of your videos, your banner, your thumbnails, your titles, your intros, your backgrounds and so on and even if you already thought about it how can you improve? Does the content do the job? Is there a better way to communicate what you want to communicate or reach the effect that you want to reach? Keep in mind though that not every meaning has to be apparent to the viewer as long as you know what you want to communicate then you'll still reach a sense of consistency throughout your channel and then you can inspire your audience by explaining these meanings later. So let's look at some solutions. The main trick is to treat the pieces of content on your channel as pieces of a puzzle that all work together to show one cohesive entity. In the shoe ad it was a message but it can also be an emotion or something else. The point is that they should all work together to create it. With that said let's start with the intros. Yes I do understand wanting to present your name but if that's all you're going to do then you're better off just showing a name tag in the beginning of your videos. In other words it is an important puzzle piece but it just fits better somewhere else. All right here we go I got this. Yeah that's right you thought you were gonna get away with talking about intros without me. Not gonna happen mister. See I'm a person who is very particular on how he likes his channels to look. My biggest pet peeve out of all of them are intros. Now you're probably asking yourself why out of all people in Freedom Central would you the friendly person who sits here every Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard do you supply us information to help us grow our channels here on this network? Why do you hate intros? Now then I don't hate all intros let me explain. When I go on to a channel which is usually a gaming channel and I'm introduced with a whole bunch of different types of intros of loud music and flashing colors telling me to subscribe. Unfortunately the thing you think the intro is doing which is trying to grab my attention is doing the exact opposite which is trying to propel me away from that particular video. Now then my word of advice for people who are solely reliant on intros to grab the individual's attention you have 10 seconds just 10 seconds to grab that person's attention and if you're using all those 10 seconds with a flashy introduction it's not going to work. You need to find a way to make a person want to stay either give them a little taste of what's to come so they'll stick around to see the outcome of that or give them something fun give them something educational anything literally anything except Blair loud music and flashy colors at them unfortunately it just doesn't work now then there are situations where it does work usually I find the channels that do work are informational channels such as news reporting channels educational channels or even review channels however when it is used by other channels such as gaming channels it doesn't work please heed my advice before I lose my connection to this fee don't use intros don't use intros whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa frosted freaks you know I love you man but if you ever do that to my feet again I will never ever say frosty I will wear this at all times always being warm and also you will never ever be able to hack me because it's an anti-virus device do you see because it keeps me from getting cold and getting a cold and hacking that's the joke so let's move on this was a banner mine and I put those numbers there because I use those graphics uh when referring to my sources in my videos you know if you saw the number one you could go to the corresponding number in the description to get a link to the research but people started wondering what those numbers were doing in there and so I kind of just deleted them because obviously that puzzle piece didn't fit fit well there now when it comes to backgrounds again you don't have to go so hardcore that every little detail has to mean something basically just wanting to create a homemade unplugged feeling justifies any background that you have at home myself I kind of met up on color psychology before I chose this orange background but what if the point of your channel is randomness can you add whatever you want then well yes and no yes because if you have thought it through and decided that it is a good idea to illustrate randomness on your channel then yeah that is what you should do no because you still have to put work into actually achieving that sense of randomness in other words you still have to put some thought into what you add so basically give meaning a thought and do that with your audience ask them audience with your audience ask them what they think because in the end you're doing it for them so that's it for this video if you want to see me go undercover to see how gay people are treated in some churches even though that they say that they treat everybody with respect and dignity then you should check out my channel there should be a button here somewhere thanks for watching bye