Stop Creating Content. Start Publishing Your Body of Work.
Why every YouTube video should be a search asset that earns trust for years, not a feed post that disappears in hours.
What if “content creation” was really about building a searchable body of work that keeps working for you years after you publish it?
Think about it.
I don’t know about you, but when I hear the words “content creation,” I get an instant ‘blech’ response. A feeling of ‘I really don’t want to do this’ or ‘that’s just not me, I’m not a content creator.’
And it’s funny, because even though I create content and help my clients create content all the time, I wouldn’t call myself a content creator.
In addition to being a YouTube strategist and agency owner, I’m also a singer and music artist. And I share this with you because it’s genuinely changed how I think about creating content.
Take one of my favorite artists of all time: Michael Jackson.
Ten studio albums, and dozens of singles, thirteen of which hit number one on the Billboard Hot 1001. But most of what he wrote never made it that far. In a 2001 online audio chat sponsored by Rolling Stone, Jackson said he wrote so many songs for one album that he "didn't even want to say the number," just to get down to the 16 that made the final cut2. The rest stayed in the vault. Some leaked years later. Some never surfaced at all. The songs you know, "Billie Jean," "Thriller," "Man in the Mirror," are a tiny sliver of a much bigger body of work that most people never actually heard.
When I started to think of myself as the artist of my YouTube channel, where every video contributes to my body of work, something clicked.
Because it became less about making content and more about craft. More about shaping and building my catalog or portfolio, knowing it would eventually lead to the ‘hits’ that others would come to know me for.
That’s really how we approach YouTube with every video released on the channel. Sharing your expertise, your stories, your way of thinking - that’s what builds trust with others. And this catalog that you’re building will naturally separate the people who resonate with your work and buy from you, from the people who never were your audience to begin with.
In fact, we’re not just creating a body of work - we’re creating a searchable body of work that will continue to be found and referenced for years to come.
By the search engines. By AI. By other people in your industry.
This is what makes YouTube different. It’s the only platform where what you publish today can continue to be discovered and keep working for you years from now.
We’re not here to feed an algorithm daily, or stay on a content hamster wheel that ends up burning us out.
We’re not here to compete with the louder voices in our space or area of expertise. And we don’t have to sound like them in order for us to get a better ROI from our videos.
We’re here to be the artist. To be ourselves. Because I have no interest in becoming a viral influencer, and I’m not here to be a general content creator.
I’m on this platform because I want to be known and respected for my craft and area of expertise. And I’m here to leverage the search engine side of YouTube, because it’s what feeds all other search references and that will work for me in perpetuity.
So what kinds of videos do you create to best leverage the search engine aspect of YouTube? There are 3 specific video types that build this kind of searchable body of work, the ones we’ve seen actually generate leads for our clients.
A single video should do at least these three jobs at once: it positions you as a unique authority in your space, it leverages YouTube’s search algorithm, and it attracts the right person, the one who eventually becomes your client.
If you want to see what those video types are and how to apply them to your business, Jewel will be covering that below inside the YouTube Authority Lab.
Until next week,
~Auret Esselen
Billboard, “Michael Jackson,” accessed via https://www.billboard.com/artist/michael-jackson
Michael Jackson, in an online audio chat with Anthony DeCurtis, sponsored by Rolling Stone, October 26, 2001. Transcript via Jackson Dynasty, https://jacksondynasty.net/2025/01/03/online-audio-chat-october-26th-2001/