A New Way To Grow On YouTube In 2022!

I'm tired of hearing the same regurgitated tips on how to grow a YouTube channel or how to get your first 1,000 or 10,000 subscribers. How about you? There are thousands of videos out there and I fond guilty of doing them as well. But it's the new year and we're going to make some changes. I'm going to share with you some of the brand new things you can focus on here on YouTube if you really want to grow your channel in 2022. Because it's not just going to be as easy as ask people to subscribe or create good titles and thumbnails. All of those are important. But what I want to do is go a little bit deeper and you some more things that you could be focusing on. The first thing is going to ruffle some feathers and that is to stop focusing on keyword research. Listen, there are so many YouTube channels out there and probably the topic, the niche that you want to do is already been done on YouTube. Stick with me because it's a good thing. But what you're going to realize as you start doing this keyword research, you're going to find like every topic is competitive and that's fine. But what you can really do is stand out and break ahead of the package, even though it's already been done on YouTube. And like I said, if it's already been done on YouTube, fantastic. You know, there is a market for the topic you want to talk about and you're not going to have to create a brand new market.

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You know your market's there. You just need to find out now what types of content that they're watching and put your own secret sauce into that content. So instead of taking all your time keyword harvesting, keyword researching, what I want you to do is code piggybacking. Now, this does not mean you are copying people, but you need to figure out who on YouTube is talking to your audience. Who is on YouTube right now that you would say is a competitor? We like to call them niche neighbors. What types of content are they creating? More importantly, I want you to look at their most popular videos. What are those topics? Can you talk about those topics? Because what that's going to help you do is if you're creating similar content, YouTube's going to pick that up in the algorithm. Somebody watches your niche neighbor's video and and then YouTube will recommend your video because it will see it's similar type of content. And if you have that title in your thumbnail that everybody talks about, that gets people to click. That's how you're going to start to grow your channel. I want to give you a little bit of data on why not keywords and why piggybacking works. So if you go into your analytics on YouTube and you go to your audience, you're literally going to see who YouTube is already piggybacking you with. You can see right here, these are the channels that YouTube is lumping me with. This is what YouTube says my audience is watching. So I could go to any of these channels. Let's say, for example, let's go to Katherine. I love what Catherine does. Go to her channel, go to her videos and see if there's any particular video in the last three months that has gotten more views than normal. That tells me, okay, her audience really enjoys this type of content. So we can see on average, okay, 11k 9, 5. There's a 32k, 30k. So we would say, here's a 51k. This is great because I actually have this as an idea that I want to do as well, what to do after starting a YouTube channel. Her audience really enjoyed that. And so that would tell me, okay, if I wanted to piggyback with Katherine and how have my content show up to her audience. Like if somebody subscribed to her channel, watches her content, when they log into their YouTube and they go to their homepage, I want to be on the homepage. Or let's say they click on this particular video or any of Katherine's video, I want to show up here and suggest it as well. So how could I put my own spin on this particular video so that YouTube can lump me with her? Maybe show me up and suggest it right after her. You can also dive in here, the comment section is gold, and see what are people asking? What are some things that I could double down on based on the audience? If this is the audience that I think is watching my channel, I want to make sure I'm answering their questions as well. So just diving into the comments section and seeing what people are saying, what they like about the content, what they don't like, and then construct your content around that market research. Another great metric that YouTube has given us, I don't know if it's on all channels because sometimes they roll this out slowly, is videos that grow your audience. So my channel, if you watch a video from a few weeks ago, is currently dying. We're trying to turn that around, is not done a good job of growing my audience. So if I go in here to see more, I can See my top performing videos. How to make a YouTube video from scratch got 180 new viewers. From that, 96 viewers returned. So that's telling me, okay, these are new viewers. And then from these new viewers who came back and watched another video. So these are doing a good job of building that subscribability factor with people. They're not just watching the video and piecing out, they are then coming back and watching another piece of content. So then this particular video then helped me attain 760, 65 views. Then you can see the bottom performing videos. Shorts. I haven't released my actual opinion on shorts, but I have my own thoughts on shorts. But you can see right here the videos that are gaining me the least returning viewers is shorts. Take that piece of content how you want. Now, I wanted to show you why your homepage and your suggested traffic is much more valuable than your search traffic. So if we go here by traffic source, and this is just in the last 28 days, the amount of views that I got from YouTube search were 19,000 views. But people only watch on average 2 minutes and 43 seconds. Whereas on the browse feature when people found me on the homepage, they almost watched double that 4 minutes and 20 seconds. And if I looked at suggested it's 4 minutes as well, a good minute more than people who Find me on YouTube search. So when people find me on browse and suggested they're going to be more likely to watch me longer, they may actually want to subscribe to me because again, they've watched me longer, they are liking my style of teaching, they're liking my content. And so this is really why it's important to focus on in on browse and suggested. The other metric that this is showing me is my click through impression. Rate is doing good for YouTube search, but when it comes to browse and suggested it's below a 3%. So what I would recommend doing is really diving into your video metrics and seeing which titles and thumbnails are getting a higher browse feature, click through rate and a higher suggested click through rate. If you want to continue getting traffic from browse and suggested, you really want to make sure you're amplifying that click through rate. The next thing that nobody is really talking about is episodic content. Yes, people are talking about creating playlists and getting people to watch multiple videos at once. But if you're here on YouTube as a business owner are asked to make money in a business, not just on AdSense, you need to make sure you're getting people over to your business, right? You need to make sure that people are booking those discovery calls with you, that they're buying your digital products or your course. So how can you make episodic content that will really explode traffic to your offers? This is a tactic that we call here at Trina Little and that we do with our agency clients called the free firework approach. So the way the firework approach works is think about a firework, right? There's that core of the firework where the explosion happens. So the core of the firework is going to be a core video for you. What that core video's main goal is to be incredibly valuable, almost webinar ish style, but you know, 20 to 30 minutes and great instructional content. And then the primary goal of your core video is to send people off the platform to your sales page, to your lead magnet, to your work with me page, to your discovery call page, right? That is the primary goal of your core video. Then from that core, right, we have those sparks which make the fireworks pretty. So your spark videos will then support your core videos. Each spark video is talking about an element of that core video. And your call to action for your spark video is to watch the core video. This way you're ensuring that you're creating this episodic content. But as YouTube starts to push more of your spark videos, because your call to action is what's your core video? Which accumulates more views, more watch time, then you're getting more eyes on your offer. So let me rewind and kind of explain that again. If the goal of all of your spark videos is to then watch the core video, YouTube's algorithm is like, huh, this, this, this and this video gets people to watch to the end and then gets them to watch a 30 minute video. Let's push this, this, this and this video to more people. Not only does this get you in, not only does this potentially get you more subscribers on YouTube, but it gets more eyeballs on your offer, hopefully making you more money in your business. This way, not only are you satisfying YouTube gods, but you're also satisfying your business as well. You're really using YouTube as this maximum lead generator, revenue generator, right? So that's really something that nobody else is talking about is that firework approach. And you can do this as many times as you want. Right now we're in the middle of a firework approach here on my channel on Monday, I dropped my core video. And so the next couple of videos are all going to be these spark videos. That talk about different types of content that lead to the core video that pulls everything together, almost like a capstone or a masterclass, but not really a masterclass.

Right.

The third thing that not a lot of people talk about, and I struggle with this one, is are you subscribable?

Right.

We hear people say, yes, you should tell people to subscribe to your channel. No, don't tell people to subscribe to your channel. But how do you really get people to subscribe to your channel? Here's the issue that I have suffered with. For the past couple of years, I've really doubled down on searchable content. Content that shows up in search ranking my videos and what that has done for my channel. Because I'm so concerned personally about making sure everything's perfect and professional that I haven't created a subscribable channel. People come to my videos, they get the content that they want and they don't have a purpose to subscribe. They get it. They peace out. So when you're looking at your channel, if you aren't growing subscribers, look at the types of content that you are creating. One way to infuse some subscribability is to tell some better stories or share a little bit more about you. One way that I've done this is vlogged a little bit and have shared not just a random vlog, but a vlog that makes sense for you all to watch. Like what it's like for me to batch record my videos and I share little pieces about, you know, taking my kids to school and how I manage time with the kids or I vlog, you know, how I plan my week.

Right.

You're literally seeing how I do these different things. It allows you to connect, connect with me. That's what's going to make me subscribable. The core videos that I'm creating or the spark videos that I'm creating, the majority of those are like discoverable videos. They're meant to go out into the world and bring new people to my channel. But if you don't have these community style videos in your YouTube strategy, what's the purpose for people to subscribe to you? How are you creating a channel that people want to come back and see what you're doing? Be invested in your journey, be invested in you as a human. Because as much as we don't want to be titled influencers, if you are a personal brand, if you are building a brand where you are selling digital courses or you are selling one on one services, you are a personal brand and you've got to get people to connect with you. How are you going to tell if you're subscribable or not? We're going to come into your analytics and you want to go to your audience here and what you want to do is look at new viewers versus returning viewers. So do you have a consistent amount of returning viewers coming back? Because that's going to help you build that core audience. But do you have a consistent amount of new viewers coming to your channel? Remember those videos that are growing? My audience are right here. I need to do a better job of getting new viewers. And you can also see down here 76% of the watch time that I'm getting are from non subscribers. So people are coming, watching my content and peacing out. So again, I'm not being a very good subscribable channel. I need to find ways to get first of all, my core audience watching every single video. So getting this subscribe number up but also getting more people wanting to subscribe and having a reason get them bought in to really following me as a channel. So if people aren't subscribing to your channel, really think about am I giving them a reason to want to subscribe, not just the content.

Right.

Y' all can get how to grow a YouTube channel from anybody here on YouTube. But really think about why do you subscribe to the channels that you do subscribe to and then figure out how you could then incorporate that into your content and your channel which kind of leads into the next thing that you can do is to start diversifying your content. Where we talked a little bit about that discussion. Discoverable versus community style content. It's not just the value packed content, but it's also the letting your guard down and letting people get to know you a little bit. Especially if you're trying to sell you on the back end. What I have kind of fallen victim to is just creating YouTube content like how to grow YouTube, how to grow a YouTube channel because it always perform well on my channel. But what that didn't allow me to do is kind of broaden my bubble a little bit. Okay, so I'm thinking about the entrepreneur, the business owner who is trying to grow their business. They're struggling with getting their email list to grow, they're struggling with selling their digital products. And they may not even want to do YouTube or they may not realize that YouTube is an option. How can I get in front of them? How can I blow my bubble up just a little bit? More to reach them. And so experimenting with new types of content, which is something we're doing here this month, where I'm talking a little bit more about social media strategy and content planning. Because while you may be here for YouTube, you probably also want to know how to use social media to help your YouTube channel. But if you're also a business owner, you also want to make sure that you're maximizing your YouTube content and using it on social media and that you have a plan over on social media and you're not just throwing content up to throw it up, but there's this whole purpose behind it.

Right.

And so what I would recommend doing, if you're wanting to grow your YouTube channel and you're. You're kind of in this rut, is start to experiment with different topics that you think your audience might enjoy. Right. Always keep in mind your audience don't just create it because you want to create it. That's important too. But you need to go and find this Venn diagram of, you know, what your audience wants versus what you want to talk about. Crisscross. Awesome.

Right?

Like that middle in that middle right there and what are those topics and see if that can help you expand to a new audience. And if you are being a subscribable channel, it'll help you get more subscribers, that will help you get more views and kind of snowball that effect. One of the things that we aren't truly honest with ourselves is how good our content is. So another thing that you can do if you really want to grow on YouTube in 2022 is give yourself an honest content analysis. Go into your analytics, look at your audience retention graph and really study them. Are you having a massive drop off in your hook? Why? What can you do to make it better? Are you seeing like this steady decline in audience retention throughout your videos? What can you do to keep people engaged? Do you need to add more editing? Do you need to take away music in the background? Do you need to add B roll? Do you need to add more text? Like, these are the things you need to be looking at and being really honest with your content to see how you can make it better. Because if you can't get people to watch your videos, YouTube's never going to push it to more people. One other thing you may want to look at when it comes to your content analysis as well, taking a look at the title and thumbnail of that video, what did you promise people and did you really deliver in that video? Because people are clicking on that title and thumbnail and they want to make sure they're getting what you told them they were going to get. And so I would recommend again, we're talking about things to do other than keyword research that's really going to help you grow your channel. Take some of that time that you would spend time, your keyword researching and really audit your audience retention graphs, look at how you can create better content and maybe you just try a different style of video that you want to see. If it does well, look at that audience retention graph on that particular video and see which pieces maybe did better. And then start the piecemeal the piece start to piecemeal the pieces start to piecemeal pieces of the videos that performed well to really help you improve the audience retention on your videos. One thing that I've loved using the past couple of weeks is the Community tab. Now again, I've fallen guilty to this one and not using it, but the Community tab will really get you some great answers from your audience here on YouTube. And now I don't mean just like posting something on the Community tab, but using the polls feature. This has been game changer for me to really understand who you are watching these videos. And the best way to use the Community tab with polls is give like two to three options to see how your audience is feeling. So some of the polls I've done recently here is to see what types of content y' all want to see from me.

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I'm thinking about expanding that bubble a little bit and I was surprised you that voted on that poll. Really want to see more social media tips. And then the other poll I was surprised when I see more editing tips as well. And so by using the Community tab, you're going to really help your content grow, expand your bubble based on really what your audience wants to to see. We also forget that YouTube is a social platform and people are on YouTube engaging and connecting. And so if you aren't using the Community tab to do polls, maybe use the Community tab to update people. I've noticed that the Community tab doesn't really work best to promote your video, but to get your audience engaged with you. Kind of like the Instagram feed, right? Or you're sharing a little bit more about you. Another post that gets really good engagement on the Community tab here on YouTube for me is just a selfie and sharing a little story or sharing a little struggle that I'm having to make that connection with you makes you feel like, oh, she gets me. She knows what I'm going through. Oh, I can totally relate. That's gonna also help you build your subscribability factor and get people coming back for video after video. And the bonus about the community tab. You don't even need a scheduler. YouTube allows you to schedule the community tab post out for like months at a time. So you gotta literally sit down on your community TAB and Schedule 3, three months worth of content and just set it and forget it. Go back and respond to people who comment on those posts once they're alive. But you honestly get all of your content scheduled on the community tab at once. So question. Are you responding to my polls? Are you voting on my polls in the community tab? Let me know. I voted if you voted on those polls before. Because it's really interesting to see the amount of people that vote on the polls and then see who here is then watching the videos as well. Now we've briefly touched a little bit about episodic content and the firework approach and content analysis. But. But does every video that you publish have a strategic plan? What is the purpose for every video that you publish? I know I've fallen victim to this where I'm just like, I gotta get a video out. I know this one's gonna do well. Let me just do it. And I didn't have a strategic plan for what that video was doing ultimately for my business. So if you don't have a strategic content plan mapped out for like four to six weeks at a time, watch the video that's on your screen right now. Because I literally bring you in to my strategy, strategic content plan for social media, how I'm posting YouTube videos and how it ties in with my business goals and my podcasts and my Instagram and my Pinterest. Now, if you have found me subscribable, I would love for you to hit subscribe and I will see you in that in depth strategic content planning video next.