Do THIS if your YouTube Channel STOPPED Growing

Truth. It's not easy to grow on YouTube if you aren't doing the right things. So if you are just getting started on YouTube or you feel like you're trying everything and nothing is helping you grow your YouTube channel, I got a few things for you in this video to try to see if it helps you grow your YouTube channel a little bit easier. Hi, I'm Trina. If this is the first time we are crossing paths, I am a YouTube strategist and I talk all about growing a YouTube channel. I've grown a few channels of my own and I've worked with hundreds of students inside my Program Video Strategy Academy and one on one clients in my full YouTube production agency. So I know a thing or two about what you need to do to actually grow a YouTube channel. I do want to do a quick shout out for all you amazing subscribers that watch me every single week. So thank you so much Amanda Vanderglik for being an amazing subscriber, showing up every week to watch my videos and leave positive messages like this. If you want to get your channel shout out on my channel, make sure you leave a comment below. Thank you. Subscribe to my channel and I'll be looking for your comment. If your YouTube channel is not growing, the first thing you need to look at is your click through rate. This is how well your video is getting people to click on. So if YouTube is showing your content to people and they aren't clicking on it, it doesn't matter how great your content is, how perfect your background is, how great your editing is, if no one's clicking on it, nobody's watching it. And if nobody's watching it, YouTube isn't going to serve it to more people. So what is a good Click through Rate? YouTube says you should focus on 2 to 10% is a good click through rate. But your click through rate can vary depending on your niche. Some niches that I have experience with have very high click through rates. Other niches have very low click through rates. I recommend you looking at your last six to eight videos and get an average. What's your average click through rate? Compete with that number. Find out how you can make your click through rate better and compete with yourself. You want to make sure your thumbnail in your title which is causing that click through rate to go up or down, sparks curiosity, makes people want to click on your video. Do you tease value? In fact, let's move into a little pro tip here. I want to walk you through some of the best practices for creating thumbnails first thing, do not repeat the exact same title as text on your thumbnail. This is not important, this is wasting space. People can see the title. You don't need to put the entire title on the text of your thumbnail. So stop. Another best practice for thumbnails is to put your face on it. Yeah. So seriously, thumbnails with people on them, with your face on them tend to get higher click through rates. So what I actually do, after every single video that I film, I take a bunch of selfies, I turn my camera on self timer, take a bunch of different photos and use that as my thumbnail. Another thing that you can do is zoom out on your thumbnail before you publish it. What you want to look for is can you tell what the text says on a very small image of your thumbnail. Remember, a lot of people are watching YouTube now on their phones and your thumbnail can get pretty small on a phone. So you need to be able to see if you zoom out on that thumbnail, make it really small. Can you determine what the text says and can you tell what the thumbnail is zoomed out? In addition to that, don't make your thumbnail too messy. Don't throw lots of text and images and icons. Keep it simple so that image stands out, sparks curiosity, or proposes some piece of value they're going to get from your video. And the last best practices for thumbnails is to have some consistent branding. You can tell when you come to my videos and if you look at my YouTube channel, you will see that I have cycled through branding, I have evolved my branding, but you can see the through line of my branding when we had the bright pinks, when we had even the beige colors, and now we're using this blue wall as a key piece of my branding so that if you happen to see my thumbnail on the browse or suggested or search, it immediately stands out and they all tie together. So if you watch one of my videos, it's going to be a lot easier for you to see another video if you liked it. You need to make sure your branding is consistent so that people can also recognize your content a lot easier. Here's a quick reminder. If you're wanting to get serious with your YouTube channel and really take your channel to that next level, don't miss any of the videos that I have coming out in the next couple of weeks. All around up leveling your YouTube strategy. Seriously, make sure you hit subscribe because I'm going into detail to really help you know what you need to do to grow on YouTube. The second thing you need to try if your YouTube channel isn't growing, is study your audience retention graph. Every single video you publish, YouTube gives you an audience retention graph. This is important because YouTube is going to push videos that people actually watch. So we need to make sure people are clicking on them, and we need to make sure people are watching them. If people are clicking on your video and leaving within 30 seconds. So let's say 70% of people leave within 30 seconds, YouTube is not going to push that video to more people because you're not getting people to watch much of your video. You see, YouTube makes more money on ads the longer people watch videos. So they're going to push videos that people actually watch. So if your channel hasn't been growing for a while, you need to dive into your audience retention of, like, your last six videos and figure out what keeps people watching and what causes people to leave. YouTube has a new feature inside of analytics now that will tell you your top performing videos for intros. So your first 30 seconds. I tend to see this being the hardest part to get people to watch for the first 30 seconds. So go into your analytics and look at your best videos for intros. What did you do? How did you open that video? How did your intro connect to your title in your thumbnail? Replicate the videos that have the highest intro rate. Okay. That's how you're going to continue to get people to watch to the end. You also want to look at continuous segments. Where are people watching your video the longest and staying for the longest? You might actually realize you don't need to add all the extra fancy editing because people are watching the longest portions of your video where you're just talking to them. Or maybe you realize they're watching the longest portions of your video when you have B roll in text. But you won't know unless you look at this data. This is how you're going to be able to improve your audience retention. And this is going to be a critical piece to grow your YouTube channel if it's not right now. Another thing to try if your YouTube channel isn't growing is to update your vibe or your style on your channel. Now, I'm not a vibe person, but I first heard Michelle B. Of Channel Notes talk about this. And then Catherine Manning also brought up a channel vibe as well. And I started to think about it a little bit. You really need to show your personality. Create a feeling here on your YouTube channel. I know specifically my channel has probably grown a little slower than normal because I haven't leaned into my vibe. I come from a master's of business background, and I worked a while in the federal government. And so my professional lifestyle was more about being button up professional suit and tie, More about the perfectionist piece. And what's important here on YouTube is to just be a little more authentic. Don't be so buttoned up. Share more about you. Share more of your style and your vibe. And so I challenge you to think about that for your YouTube channel. Are you too buttoned up? Are you worrying about being too perfect? Is taking me quite a while to break out of my professional shell. And that's probably why I see other female YouTube educators really breaking out because they're not afraid to be more of themselves. The work professional background that I've had just has caused me to really make sure I show up professional. And I'm working really hard on that. Not only is your vibe and your style how you show up on video, but around your videos and around your channels and around your brand in General. With a YouTube channel, you are creating a brand. And just this year, I've loosened up my brand a little bit more to kind of push me out of my shell. And you can see more color, more waves in my graphics, you know, mixing of the blues and the pinks and the orange. This is part of your channel vibe and style, too. Is your coloring standing out? Is your brand clear? Does your brand show who you are? And that's what we did recently with some of my new rebranding, is to let the imagery and the colors and the text show a funner side of myself. A funner is a word, but think about that. Okay? Just take a step back, watch some YouTube channels and see if you can pick out their vibe and style and see what I'm talking about. And then take a little bit to sit back and reflect. Okay? How do you want people to find feel after watching your videos? How do you want people to connect with you? I also challenge you to look at some brands that you really love. Share this in the comments. But why I want you to think about some brands you love is I want you to think about what are they doing that makes you love those brands. So whether that's madewell, Target, the Chip and Joanna brand, I don't even know what that's called. But start to figure out what makes you love a brand and their vibe and their style and see how you can create something like that for your channel. That might be the missing piece that may actually be causing Viewers of your videos to not turn into subscribers because they don't feel connected to you, because you don't know your true vibe or style. Another thing you may want to try if your YouTube channel isn't growing, is looking into systems or tools that can help you do this. Now, I don't mean buying views and subscribers by no means, not at all. But for you to take the time to think about the things like your channel vibe and style and doing the research and editing the videos and the thumbnails, and you may need some help. And I know it's scary to think about hiring somebody, but maybe it's somebody you just hire two hours a week, maybe like eight hours a month to help you take something off your plate so you can really focus on creating better thumbnails, editing your videos better. Trust me, it was very hard for me to realize that I could afford to hire somebody to take some stuff off my plate. But it's not going to be as expensive as you think because you can seriously get somebody to help you out, even if it's five hours a month. You also want to take a look at any kind of tools that you may need to invest in, like Canva or PicMonkey, because these graphic softwares are really going to help you create better thumbnails. Not only do they have templates, but they have a lot of editing tools to make your thumbnails pop. And a lot of the thumbnails that you are seeing on YouTube are created by Canva and PicMonkey. So maybe you need to look into actually investing or paying a monthly fee to have access to the higher level tools that are available in PicMonkey or Canva. Another tool would be TubeBuddy. TubeBuddy saves me a lot of time when it comes to researching my videos. I want to make sure the videos I'm creating for you you're actually searching for. And so when I can use TubeBuddy's Keyword Explorer, which I talk more about in this video that you can watch after this, I show you how I'm looking for topics that people are actually searching for. Otherwise I'm wasting my time. Because if you aren't searching for it, how are you ever going to find it? TubeBuddy also allows me to test my thumbnails. They allow me to do AB testing so I can really hone in on creating the best thumbnail that you are going to click on. So that may be something that you want to invest on. If your channel is kind of stalled out. Getting organized is another thing, Maybe a project management tool like Asana. I live and die by Asana. And what you can do in a project management tool like Asana is really create this workflow that's easier for you to replicate over and over and over again so you're not having to take the brain power to think about. Okay, what do I need to do next? You can put your full focus in growing your YouTube channel. Focusing on the things you need to do for your YouTube channel. Having the time to look at your audience retention graphs and your click through rate. If you're completely organized and you know exactly what you need to do, it will streamline a lot of your time. In fact, I walk you through how to set up a system like this and give you my complete system and a tutorial on how to set up in my program prep system for success. If you're interested in grabbing that getting organized, you also get access to all of my business workflows as well. I will link to it down below. It's really going to help you, I'm telling you, get organized and it will make a world of a difference for saving you time. So you can take that time and focus on looking at the things I'm talking about here today if you want to grow your YouTube channel. Another thing to look at if your YouTube channel isn't growing is potentially having a business model. About 98% of the people that I work with are using YouTube to drive leads and clients and sales to their business. They aren't counting on YouTube AdSense to make them money. In fact, they're already making money in their business and they're going to use YouTube to get more visible, to create content, to build know like and trust, and to drive leads to their business. In fact, Most of the one on one clients that come to me to do their complete YouTube strategy, they're making over half a million dollars a year and it's not from AdSense and they have small channels, channels under 10,000 subscribers. In fact, I have a client that has under 3,000 subscribers and is a $2 million business. If your YouTube channel isn't growing, you need to decide what is the goal of your YouTube channel because that's really gonna affect what you do and what you focus on. So if your goal is to get more leads and to get more clients, you're going to have a different strategy than somebody who just wants to make AdSense money. And that's not my specialty. My specialty is helping you get leads and clients to your business. Because you might not need to be chasing views and subscribers, you just need to be creating the right content that gets people aware of who you are and wanting to work with you. Now look, I know setting up a funnel and a business model if you've never done that before, can seem messy and like a lot of work. But I'll tell you a little secret. My email funnels or my sales funnels behind the scenes have been a little bit messy in the past five years. They are nowhere near perfect. But I'm making multiple six figures and my business has doubled in revenue every year for five years. So even with a messy unorganized funnel, I'm still able to make money in my business. And I'm only making like $500 a month on YouTube AdSense. So this is why it's really important to think about a business model off of YouTube. Now your next step, if your YouTube channel isn't growing and you're ready for it to grow, is pick your own path. I have a 60 minute training that will teach you everything you need to know about Creat, a binge worthy YouTube channel that drives you more leads and more sales. Or you can watch this video on your screen right now where I'll walk you through everything I do each week to help me grow my channel. Which one are you going to pick? It's up to you. See you next week.