My Faceless YouTube Videos Vs. My Talking Head Videos

Is one a better strategy for growing a channel?

It’s summer.

I’m a mom with a freelance business and blogging business.

This means over the summer, I’m more mom than mompreneur and that’s okay. I WANT that, and that’s the reason I chose this lifestyle of working from home.

But, because of the hustle and bustle of summer — road trips, hockey camp, play dates, birthday parties, chilling in the backyard — I had to find a way to still fit my business into my day.

And since my Youtube channel hit 10k subscribers, I wanted to keep the momentum going.

So, I decided to ask my Youtube Community if they didn’t mind me doing some faceless videos, so that I could publish much faster then one a month.

And the comments told me that it’s okay and to do what I can!

I was pretty sure they didn’t really care since they enjoy my teaching videos to help them be a freelancer.

As well, I did this before (publish faceless videos) after a long break and people enjoyed those videos too.

I ended up doing 21 faceless videos.

Most of the videos were slideshows I made or showing my desktop and some sites.

So, I’m doing it again but now I’m not doing slideshows (these take time to create).

Let’s look to see how my channel did and is doing with this faceless strategy.

My Thumbnails Changed

I didn’t want to hoodwink my audience and create the same thumbnail with a big picture of me when you don’t even see my face in the video.

So, I had to come up with some thumbnails to denote this.

I was worried not having my face in the thumbnail would lower my click-through rates, but I realized it didn’t matter.

It was the words and topic that made a video have a high click-through rate.

I Grew My Subscribers Slowly

I’m not sure if this is a result of producing faceless videos, or just having gaps in publishing but once I hit the 10k mark, my subscribers grew very slowly.

Because of the slow growth, I published less and it became a cycle in a way. I broke this cycle by dong a Live and that was well-received!

What About My Views?

Surprisingly, my views are consistent with or without my face.

Maybe I don’t have enough data to see if there really is a difference, but for my audience and channel, as long as I produce any video, my subscribers will watch it!

But I Do Worry

I am a little worried about not showing my face. My name is my brand, and so is my face.

If I don’t show my face, I am not representing my brand, so once the busy summer is over, and the twins are back in school, I’ll go back to the standard talking head videos that I enjoy doing, and that helps me grow my brand.

Have you done both a talking head and faceless video? What was your takeaway?

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