Trena Little shares seven concrete changes that improved her YouTube channel, including equipment upgrades, thumbnail design, editing techniques, attending events, and workflow improvements. Practical advice for creators looking to grow their audience.
If you're ready to spend a little bit more Money on your YouTube channel and you're wondering what should you first invest in that's really going to see a Change on your YouTube channel and help you grow it faster? I've got a couple ideas for you coming up. Welcome back. My name is Trena. If you are brand new here on this channel, I help creative entrepreneurs just like you figure out how to start using YouTube in your business strategy. I post new videos every Monday and Wednesday, so make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any of them. Now, if you're ready to take your YouTube channel to that next step and you're ready to put some money into it, let's talk about the first things that you should invest in. So the first obvious thing to invest in is new equipment. So I want to talk about the first pieces of equipment you should invest in. And I'm not talking about going out and buying the fanciest camera possible. I actually think the first thing you should invest in if you're just using your phone is lighting. Whether you buy soft box lighting, which I have two of right here, or you buy a ring light, which I also have, lighting is going to make or break the quality of your content no matter what camera or what phone you're shooting on. Now, if you got the lighting down, the next thing should be a microphone. Yep. Not even the camera yet. I haven't even addressed the camera. Actually, the mic is going to help your audio sound a lot better. And the first two things people notice when they come to your channel is your lighting and your audio. So I suggest just starting there first when you're investing. Now, if you are ready to get a camera, I personally like the Canon G7X because it's portable. I can use it for other things like family trips or going to the park with my kids. And it also has a flip up screen. That way I can look into the screen, make sure I'm not blurry, make sure I'm in the screen and not have any issues when I'm done filming with a dslr, I feel there are too many problems for me to deal with. I like to just set my camera up, hit record and go. So that's why I suggest the Canon G7X. Moving on from equipment, let's talk about the next thing, which is the thumbnails. This is the second thing that I really think you should invest in. So whether it's taking some graphic design courses or some actual courses on how to create thumbnails, or you outsource it to a designer. Thumbnails are what gets people to click on your videos and they're very important to your YouTube channel success. This is one of the first things that I decided to outsource when I got the money, and it's where I invested in my channel. And when I did outsource my thumbnails to somebody, we increased my click through rate with my thumbnails by 4,300%. That's just how important thumbnails are. If you're thinking about outsourcing because you have some money to invest, I would definitely start there. The next thing that you could also outsource and invest in is an editor. If you're ready to just get the editing off your plate and you have the money finding an editor to do it now, it may take a little bit of time to get that editor trained on your styles and your likes and how you want it all to work. And it can also be hard to let go of that control of editing your videos and realizing this person's gonna see me mess up on all my videos because my editor does as well. But once you can get over that, having the extra time to spend on other things than editing is totally worth that weird feeling when you send that video to your editor thinking, yeah, he saw me mess up all those times. A potential scandal with the Another way you can invest into your YouTube channel is go to events. One of the best events that I went to this year that learned so, so much about YouTube was Vid Summit. There's also events like video marketing world VidCon. There's also other smaller conferences that you could go to that aren't video and YouTube specific. But other events like Creative at Heart and the Together Experience, these are all conferences that you can connect with people or collaborate with people that are going to help you grow your channel as well. So if you're thinking about what am I going to do in 2019, think about some events you could go to to just start connecting. Now let's talk about investing into some sales. So whether you have a PC or you have a Mac, you could definitely upgrade your editing software. So if you aren't ready to outsource yet, now if you have a Mac, you could upgrade to Final Cut Pro, which is what I upgraded to when I had enough money to go from Imovie to Final Cut Pro. It gives you a little more flexibility in editing. You can stack different elements on top, you can do more color correcting. It just gives you more things that you can Add to the to make your videos better. If you're a PC user, you could upgrade to the Adobe version, which is Premiere Pro. Definitely get started on the free software first. But if you're ready to invest, I would definitely suggest upping your editing software along with editing. Some other things you could invest in is some stock photos or stock B roll. Yeah, there's actually a thing so I have a subscription to Hot Stock, which allows me to have a plethora of stock images. So I can throw some in right now and it looks like B roll. I can use different images to really just highlight the points that I'm talking about that I can't really grab myself. So if I'm talking about working in a team, I can grab a photo from there of a team, can really show that through imagery. And also Storyblocks is actually a stock video library that you could go to and buy stock video. So if you have a hard time getting B roll or not sure how to create B roll, this is a great place to invest in as well. Along with upping your video quality, you could definitely invest in some titles, transitions and effects. So I went to FXNUT and bought basically everything they had because there's so many great things effects that they have there for such a great value. I just bought them all and it just makes my video so much more engaging and it keeps people watching longer. Another thing that you should think about investing in also is extra batteries for your camera and SD cards. So right now my battery is flashing that it's almost dead. But I still have a couple more videos to shoot. So I actually have one already plugged in ready to go. So if you're planning to take YouTube seriously and you want to start batching these videos, you've got to have some extra batteries and SD cards and make sure you can keep filming those videos on your batch days. A couple final things to think about to invest in is also taking the time to shoot some B roll. I'm going to go out today and get some different B roll that I can incorporate into videos. And also having a workflow, I took time to really invest in my workflow and figure out what works best. And if you want my video workflow, you can absolutely grab it. I'll link it down below, you can go over there, buy that, and you can have the workflow that has taken me two years to map out. Now if you want to continue to learn how to use YouTube to grow, make sure you click that video on your screen right now and don't forget to subscribe to this channel for more strategies every Monday and Wednesday on how to use YouTube to grow your business. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.
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