Veritasium

Veritasium is a professional science/ discovery Youtube channel that has been on Youtube since 2010. The name comes from a play on the Latin word for an element of truth. You might have heard another version: Veritaserum. Its the Harry Potter version.

Throwing out videos that cover a wide range of subjects including:

How they caught the Golden Gate killer
The surprising genius of sewing machines
How electricity actually works.

Quite a bit of a mix and match of topics. But, they are organised into sub channels: Space, Engineering, Physics etc.

There's Youtube Shorts and something that you don't often see, which is a huuuge plus:

Translations into S.Korean, Italian and Spanish. With the Spanish channel having 2.2million subs, Italian channel: 6k subs but only 12 videos and S.Korean: 21k subs and 64 videos

The positives of Veratasium

Right then, we have on the main channel at the time of writing (breathe in):

16 million subs
412 videos
2 billion views
multiple amount of social channels including: Insta (276k followers), TikTok (1.3 million followers), X.com (296k followers), Facebook (2.2 million followers)
We have Patreon (8k followers)
Products
Sponsors
Affiliate links

We also have that Derek Muller (the host) is educated (Engineering Physics and then a PhD in Physics education). On top of that he has created/ written/ been in:

ABCs Catalyst
Uranium- Twisting the Dragons Tail
TEDX Sydney
Sciencium TV show
2Veritasium
Smarter Every Day

Which is really cool because it actually shows that you assume that the host knows what they are talking about. They have a history of trying to share knowledge and has an idea on how to produce quality programming.

So with all this coolness, can Veritasium do more?

You would think that this channel would be streaming ahead. And when you look at it, it is. People are connecting with it. You don't get that many views or subs without doing something right.

And as always, we are not saying anything bad against the channel, just trying to help and see where we can help with ideas that might (or might not) work :)

Snatoms. Now these are clearly aimed towards kids to allow them to learn. And if targeted can show science students chemicals in 3D which can be very helpful to visualise what a structure looks like.

But what ever way you look at them they are magnetic balls that are not that fun. Sure, make your chemical...then, ermm, remove it and start t make another? It is very difficult to put a spin onto this that makes it more fun for kids to buy/ want their parents to buy for them. It will probably be the parents that buy for their kids. But take Vsauce:

That looks cool.

Could you make an app with chemicals? Like a time limit to move atoms from one place to the structure?

Anything interacting or buildable? Especially when the site seems to be Physics and Engineering? Even Mark Rober seems to have subscription boxes for up and coming young engineers?

If you have to sell the chemical atoms then how about aiming towards schools and colleges? Give them more of a bulk discount but aim for areas where Science interaction is a must. You are then going to get kids talking about them to their parents (who might not have seen your videos).

Then we have who the videos are targeting? Is it adults, teens, kids? It seems to be older than 14 yrs old generally. Which is OK. But again, it brings up the question of why then promote Snatoms?
Like the idea of references. This seems to occur within the info section of each video. So it adds credibility. As long as you mention within your videos bias and try to be unbiased is going to be the key. But is can be difficult. Its like do you bring on experts who believe in your topic or do you bring in experts that disagree with your topic? But then both need to be challenged and then that can lead to a larger video :) As long as you can assess the studies that you quote- saying this study showed XY and Z but it also asked 5 people which is a very low study group. We find the problem with finding references is that you can find a reference for anything. But is that reference true or did they use true studies?
No website. Sure you have the Snatoms bu there is no linking to Veritasium [update, when you go to veritasium.com there is a website]. So no linking to a website. But, the website looks like this:

Seems good, but there is a spider video as the latest one. On Youtube:

The spider video is the 10th video gone. So the website is not keeping up with the Youtube channel. X.com seems to be updated. Insta...unsure. The pictures on the website don't seem to match up with the newest from Insta but those pictures are present on Insta.

All this seems odd especially when you are promoting employment opportunities and Patreon on your website. But no email newsletter (or one that we could find). We have people liking the posts on the website so people are engaging.

Merch. Obviously Derek is busy with a lot of media channels. But could there be some merch to buy? TShirt quotes even? Books/ multimedia learning packages- for home and school. How about exam prop books for kids- which could also link into some Youtube videos. Heck there could even be a cartoon series that explains science to a younger audience
Events. Surely science themed events would start to engage with your audience. Even roadshows that go around the country (which, as an example, increased DudePerfects loyalty with their viewers and created more of a multimedia entity). And we think that this is the main aspect that seems to be missing. The interaction with Veritasium. The videos are maintaining millions of views but you need funnelling in and more of a multimedia experience to create sticky products and to spread the brand. Videos and magnetic atoms might not be a long term solution unless they are utilised elsewhere and coupled with other products.

As per always we wish Veritasium all the best

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