Worth the Hype: What Is YouTube’s New Growth Tool?

Hype is a new engagement option on YouTube that goes beyond liking and commenting – think of it as a super like. If you’re struggling to crack the YouTube algorithm, this could be a key way to boost your channel’s visibility. Here’s how it works:

When a viewer clicks the Hype button on one of your videos, it accumulates Hype points. As these points grow, your video could make it onto the Hype Leaderboard, which is a ranking of the top 100 Hyped videos.

Hype Leaderboards are also unique to each country, meaning you’ll have the opportunity to put your business in front of the exact customers you’re trying to reach.

However, when I visited the Leaderboard, I was surprised that even the video in the bottom position still had 90,000 Hype points. My first thought was – how can smaller channels expect to compete with this?

To level the playing field, YouTube decided on a weighted points system, meaning that the smaller your channel, the more Hype points each Hype will be worth. In other words, you don’t necessarily need 90,000 Hypes to accumulate 90,000 Hype points.

Hypes can be monitored in the YouTube Studio app or desktop site. When you visit the Engagement tab on individual video analytics, you’ll now see a Hype card, which shows the number of Hypes you’ve received and how many points this equates to.

Outside of getting on the Hype Leaderboard, I expect this metric to be a useful indicator of the content that your viewers find the most valuable. This is because, unlike the standard like button, YouTube viewers can only Hype three videos per week. This limit means Hypes will usually be more intentional than likes, and so they suggest that your video is standing out from the competition.

Growing on social media is difficult, and Hype offers an exciting new way to be discovered. To have the most time to build Hype points within the seven-day window, it’s a good idea to ask your audience for Hypes as soon as your video goes live. I recommend adding a polite request when you share your new video on social media or your YouTube Community posts.

In the future, YouTube has plans to create multiple Hype Leaderboards for different interests, which could see highly targeted audience members discovering your channel. Are you going to prioritize Hypes as a part of your YouTube strategy? Let us know in the comments.