7 Biggest Mistakes Online Course Creators Make on YouTube!

The truth is, so much education here on YouTube about growing a YouTube channel isn't created for entrepreneurs or business owners. Most of the content here on YouTube about growing on YouTube is created specifically for content creators or people who want to become YouTube famous or influencers. These are different metrics that you must be looking at to become YouTube famous or become an influencer than what you want to be looking at as an entrepreneur who wants to sell more of your digital products, more online courses, or find clients who actually want to work with you. So listening to the majority of the Advice here on YouTube about growing a YouTube channel is pretty bad advice for entrepreneurs. To help you save some time and really start focusing on the right things to do here on YouTube that will move the needle in your business, I. E. Make more sales of your online course, digital product or book you more clients. Here are the seven biggest mistakes online course creators make on YouTube so you can stop doing them right now. First mistake is focusing on too much how to content. Look, I get it. You think you need to rank on YouTube, you need to rank on search. And we've heard this term for so long on YouTube. The problem is the way the algorithm has changed. We know how advanced AI has got. Search results per individual person here on YouTube are completely different. You see what YouTube tries to do in the search is, is basically find the best content for that person based on their previous viewing behavior. So for example, if my kid was watching a bunch of videos on how to draw a cat, right? And then the next day she types in how to draw a beagle, some of those videos are going to be videos on how to draw a cat because the past viewer behavior of her will was watching how to draw cat videos. And so YouTube, the algorithm thinks, well, I know you typed in how to draw a beagle, but we actually think based on your behavior that you would like this better. So even though you try to rank on search, it is different. The results are different per user. Now you still do as an online course creator or a service provider, want to show up in search, but you want to show up for specific problems that your target audience is having. Basically the audience that is going to want to buy from you, you need to create the specific video for them. So when they type it in search, they think, how did that person know my exact problem? Instead of focusing on generic how to videos like how to start an Instagram account, how to use Canva, how to create a Pinterest graphic in Canva, the other reasons why these generic how to videos aren't really going to help you out is because I like to call them freebie chasers. There are people that are going to come get the answer to their question and peace. They have no reason to want to learn more about you, to want to watch your entire video. In fact, your how to videos may have specific areas in that video where you see audience retention spike. And that's because people fast forward right to that point, get what they need and they're gone. This is not going to help you get more email subscribers, get more core sales, get more clients. You need to be focusing on specific how tos for your audience. For example, instead of just how to make a Trello board, you can focus this on your particular target audience by just changing, changing this to how to set up a Trello board for your clients to ensure they complete all their assignments. Something like that. Right? So if you're teaching service providers how to set up a system to make a better client experience using Trello, that's the specificity that you want to get when creating how to videos. If you wanted to result in more online course sales or clients, the next biggest mistake is not marketing your videos. Now, I want to talk about this in two different ways. First of all, I understand that most of you watching are probably a solo business owner and you probably haven't hit that five figure a month business milestone yet. So if that's where you are at, again, you are a team of one probably, maybe you have an assistant, but your time is really limited. So thinking about marketing your video is kind of on your list, but kind of towards the bottom because your goal is just to get this video out there. In fact, let me know in the comments. Are you a team of one or do you have somebody on your team? Do you have one other person working with you? I'm just curious those of you that are watching where you're at with a team that also helps me focus on how to share and deliver or teach my content here specifically for you. So just let me know in the comments. Okay? So since your time is probably limited, you're skipping a lot of steps. And one of the biggest steps online course creators and service providers Skip here on YouTube is creating a good title and thumbnail. And this is actually part of my process that I do first in all of my content. In fact, I won't even write any content for a video until I know exactly what my title is going to be and my thumbnail concept is going to be. So what I generally see happen with course creators and service providers is thumbnails and titles are usually what you're coming up with as your video is uploading. And so it's not adequately marketed for your target audience to click on it. So if your video isn't marketed towards your target audience and you're thinking through that title in the thumbnail, your audience isn't going to click on it. Therefore, you're not getting the right people clicking on it that will want to buy or work from you. So instead, you really want to spend time, like I said, thinking about your title and your thumbnail. The first step, before you even formulate the content on the back end, the next mistake is focusing on the wrong metrics. Now, like I said earlier in this video, so many YouTube educators here on YouTube are talking to content creators or people who are trying to become YouTube famous and not business owners. We get so wrapped up in these vanity metrics like followers and subscribers and views. But again, as a business owner, it's not about the most amount of subscribers or the most amount of views, but the right subscribers and the right views that are going to turn into customers and clients. And in fact, many of the metrics here on the YouTube platform, and what YouTube really pushes to you as well, that they think is important, is for creators, because the YouTube platform wants creators to make content that keep people on the platform longer. The longer people stay on the platform, the more ads YouTube can show on videos, the more money YouTube ultimately makes. But as a course creator or a service provider, you want to be creating videos that get the right people to click on it and then get them off of YouTube. So there are completely different metrics you want to be tracking as a business owner to ensure you're creating the right videos for your channel to attract the right people. In fact, one of my last videos, and I will link it right up here, I dove into specifically what metrics you need to be looking at, and I even gave two specific ones because again, I know you're busy, you're a team of one, or maybe have one other person working for you, and you don't have time to dive into all the metrics YouTube provides you. But I dove into that. I would definitely watch that video after this one. But specifically, the metrics you should be tracking aren't viewers or subscribers, but you should be tracking click through rates and video audience retention for every single video. When you can focus on improving these two metrics, that's when you're going to start to see YouTube putting you in front of more of the right people. And that's when you're going to start seeing more sales and more clients coming into your business. The next mistake that I see course creators and service providers doing here on YouTube is spending time on all the wrong things. And again, I know you're short on time. I know you don't have a lot of extra time to do everything that you want to do on YouTube. But I'm telling you, there are certain things that are going to be more worth the squeeze, so to speak, than others. So one of the things you're totally wasting your time on, it's not going to do much in moving the needle in your YouTube channel. Success is finding the fancy equipment or buying the fancy equipment, obsessing over what your background looks like and getting the best backgrounds and also worrying about your editing and making it all fancy and having these transitions and all this extra stuff. Listen, those aren't the things that are going to grow your channel substantially that will result in more clients and sales in your business. Where you should be focusing your time is understanding your target audience, doing the research, interviewing them to understand what are their pain points that they are having people that who have bought your course, why have they bought your course, what specific topic were you speaking about or they heard you speak about that caused them to buy or want to work with you? When you can spend the time on that and know you're creating content based on what caused people to buy, doesn't matter what your background is, doesn't matter if you're using your phone or a fancy video camera. That's what's going to make a difference with your content. In the fact that that's the content that's going to get in front of the right people that's going to make you more sales. The next big mistake, and I'm guilty of this for a long time, is not asking people to take an action. Like I said, I'm just as guilty as everybody else and assuming everybody knows what I have to offer and that they will buy when they are ready or when the timing is right. People don't retain or remember or hear every single thing that you say or that you tell them. So while it feels like you've talked about your offer, you've talked about your course, you've talked about your mastermind. People don't always remember or they don't hear everything that you say. So it is on you. It is your job as a business owner to constantly be reminding them of your offers, who it's for and what that offer solves for that person But I know if you're anything like me, you're like, well, I don't really want it to be salesy, Trina. Like, I'm not kind of like that salesy person. That is why YouTube is such an important platform to use the right way. Because you can tie in your offers and what you do very seamlessly if you are using your content the right way. I do this in my videos when I'm sharing a story or I'm sharing or why this particularly works because this particular client at xyz and it's because she used this process in my program. And if you're interested in it, here's how you can apply. Right. It's not like you need this program right now or you will fail. Right. I tie it into the education in the storytelling pieces that I do in my content because so many of my audience wants to hear examples of how this worked. And so those examples really lead into great ways to talk about the results my particular programs got. This will actually make your viewers respect you more and get more action takers from your videos. But you need to have this baked into your content. And then there's one thing here too that most people don't do at the end of every single video is have a call to action. They throw in way too many calls to action. So have you ever heard the person say, like, subscribe and comment? No, like, absolutely not. You need meaningful calls to action if you want your viewer to take that action. And you, you don't want to be throwing a bunch of calls the action or they're not going to know what to take. So I recommend having one, maybe two specific calls the action and why they should take that action. So in one of my last videos, I said about how important audience retention is for videos. And I teach how to learn what to say in your videos and give you my script template inside of my offer going video for just $37. So that was my end of video call to action that really tied into the I was talking about in my video. So again, it just flowed together naturally. It didn't sound sleazy and it actually sounded like I was helping them out by providing this offer for just $37. This is another big mistake that I am guilty of as well. And even my clients that I work with inside of my YouTube production agency struggle with and it is tracking results from your YouTube channel. Now, YouTube gives you a lot of data on the platform, but what happens after they leave the platform? That's the kind of tracking that I'M talking about you need to know if the content that you're creating, the time you're putting into YouTube is paying off, I. E Getting you sales or clients. And so one of the biggest pieces of teaching or one of the biggest modules that we teach inside of my mastermind 10 count replay is setting up your Google Analytics and getting your Google Analytics dashboard set up. So we can see based on the Traffic coming from YouTube, are they converting? Because you may be getting traffic from Instagram, Facebook ads, YouTube, your website, but which content, which platform that they are coming from is actually converting the highest. So we know we get a lot of traffic from Instagram to my offer going video. But what we didn't realize until we got Google Analytics set up is while we have more traffic coming from Instagram, the conversion rate is about half of what the traffic coming from YouTube is. So we know that our traffic from YouTube converts double than what Instagram does. And this is what has led me to really prioritize YouTube and feel good about prioritizing YouTube because I'm tracking the metrics that show me my time is best spent here. And I fully, wholeheartedly believe every single business owner that is creating content needs to have their Google Analytics set up. That's why I've paid to have a Google Analytics coach inside of my mastermind 10k on replay. Another mistake online course creators and service providers make here on YouTube is they don't realize you can could build a really awesome community here on YouTube. We look at YouTube so much as a search engine, but there are comments on every single video. And so many YouTube channels have blown up as massive brands. Think about Ryan's Toy channel or Blogilates, tone it up, even Mr. Beast, right? They built a solid community here on YouTube. And while we think about, you know, DMS and messaging and calls, comments over on Instagram, we sometimes neglect that here on YouTube and neglect the opportunity to connect with our viewers and build that community here on YouTube. Two things that you can do is use the community tab to get them involved in picking your next videos with polls, asking them questions, responding to them in every single video. Again, I am guilty of kind of neglecting that, but you can have some amazing conversations with your audience here on YouTube that will build that relationship and help you have that solid community here on YouTube. Now if you're ready to take YouTube more seriously, you can use it to generate more online sales or book more clients from your YouTube content. I'm going to be hosting an exclusive YouTube accelerator for all of my 10k on replay clients in August. During the course of three weeks, I'm going to personally help each client inside a 10k on replay. Clarify your target audience with this new process that we've developed inside our YouTube production agency. Help out speed specifically your content plan for your channel for the next six months and get your channel up and running in the right direction so that it's driving more of the right people to your business. If you're Looking for more one on one help to finally get your YouTube channel up and running or get it running the right way, I. E. Actually making you sales in your business and you're ready to join me in this first time ever YouTube accelerator. Apply to 10K on replay right now at trina little.com forward/10K. Since this is such a high touch program we work together for a year, I do ask that everybody apply so we can get a sense of are we all on the same page and will this program be the right program for you based on where you're at in your business? I take a select amount of clients as well because I am so hands on. I understand my client's business inside and out so I can really provide them advice and steps forward that will get them the results that they want. Go ahead, fill out that application on trina little.com forward/apply and we'll be in contact. Then while you wait to hear back from us, I encourage you to watch this video next where I share with you three different ways you can get to five figure months. Even if you are a team of one, it's a good one.