Do you REALLY need a NICHE on YouTube (+ how to find a niche)

Happy Monday. In today's show, if you are catching the replay, we're going to be talking about niching. So what's the deal with niching? Do you need the niche? If so, how far do you need a niche? And are you already too niched? And that's why you're not seeing the views and the growth on YouTube that you wanted to see. That's everything we're going to be covering here in this live stream. So if you're watching whether it's the replay, hashtag replay, if you're catching the replay, if you're here live with me, go ahead and say hello and let me know what your your current niche is on YouTube. Or you can be 100% honest and say, I have no idea, Trina, what my niche is. That's why I'm here to figure that out. So go ahead, let me know in the chat. I love catching up with you all. Let me just say again, I am live streaming here on YouTube and on Facebook thanks to Restream. Restream sponsors this live show every Monday at 12:00pm Eastern Standard Time. And if you want to learn more about Restream, head to trina little.com forward/restream because it's literally made my live streaming life a million percent better. It makes it so much easy. There's no fancy software needed, there's no techie software needed. I just log into my Restream account, connect my YouTube and my Facebook and I can go live at the same time. And all the comments from YouTube and Facebook are all lined up right here in my chat so I can see YouTube for musicians is here from YouTube. Deborah is here from Facebook. She is a baby toddler preschool, does music for baby toddlers. So that is why I absolutely love Restream. So check them out. Trina little.com forward/restream if you don't know who I'm this first time you're catching my live stream. I'm a YouTube strategist and I run a YouTube management agency for online entrepreneurs who are ready to get serious with YouTube but want someone else to manage all that stuff. So basically for our clients, we do everything for them except film the videos because we can't yet do that, but because we can't be them. So we tell them what videos to shoot, we edit their videos, project manager, YouTube channel, and I'm also the founder of Video Strategy Academy, which is my hybrid core slash group coaching program. We have hundreds of students inside of there learning how to use YouTube to grow their business. So generate leads to their webinars, generate leads to their opt ins, get clients, get coaching clients and you can catch me here every single Monday at 12:00pm Eastern Standard Time talking about things like getting started on YouTube, how to grow on YouTube, how to use YouTube in your business and how to level up your video content strategy. But that said though, quick announcement. I will not be live next week. I'm actually going to my first in person mastermind now that I'm all, you know, that stuff and I won't be here next week but we will still be having our channel reviews next Monday. So Monday the 31st. It is a holiday here in the states. So yes, it is a holiday here in the States. I will still be doing the live stream on May 31. I will be posting in my YouTube community tab for volunteers to have their channel reviewed by me. I'm going to pick three channels and I will personally review your channels live on May 31st. Now for you to get selected you need to have commented on these live streams, have attended these live streams, whether the replay or live and be subscribe to my channel. That is how we are picking our channels that we review here every last Monday of the month. So just a heads up if you want me to take a look at your channel, give you some real life feedback, you ask me questions while I'm doing that. That will be May 31st and I will put the opportunity for you to submit your channel for for that opportunity on. I'm looking at my calendar Thursday, May 22nd, 7th. All right, no live stream next week since I will be out of town. So let's get in to specifically niching because I know so many of you have asked me that question. That was a poll I posted a couple of weeks ago when I was determining content here and it was pretty neck and neck with the other the promotion plan which I did that live stream last week if you did not catch that. So if you've got questions about niching 100% pop them in the chat because I love to answer these in real life examples. I feel like you're going to get way more out of this by hearing real life examples than me. Just kind of theorize our case study. For me personally, that's how I like to learn as well. So if you have a specific niche or you have a specific YouTube where you're like I don't know if I'm niched enough. I don't know if I'm too niche. I don't even know what a niche is and that's fine. There are no stupid dumb questions here. I'm just here to help you really use YouTube in whatever position you want it to be used, whether it is to grow here on YouTube and monetize your YouTube content, or you're using YouTube to generate leads and clients and get more of your courses or digital products. So that is my goal here. And so I want to help you the best way that you can. So leave your comments in the questions right now. Hello, La Dolce Vita from Italy. I'm beginning, but I share my experience about life in Italy and learning Italian. Hello, Double A's Crazy gaming. I watch all your videos and like it. Thank you so much, Linda. Life, etc. Hello, Deborah. Hi, how are you? Jeannie? Hello. Okay, so let's get into some of these questions. So Deborah says, is my niche too big and make videos for parents and teachers? So Deborah, I will say that's a little vague, okay, because you say parents and teachers, are they to teach parent and teachers how to be parent and teachers, are they to teach parents and teachers how to be science teachers how to write what you need to understand with a niche. Okay, let's talk about this. What you need to understand with the niche is you need to take the topic you are passionate about, all right, over here that you are passionate about and the topics that are being searched on YouTube. Okay? What are people wanting? What are people searching for? What are people needing help with? And you need to be able to bring those together and kind of like a Venn diagram, you know, those two overlapping circles, your sweet spot is going to be where those two circles overlap. Because you've got to be passionate about the content that you are creating. But you've got to make sure that, that, that content is being searched for. Otherwise how are they going to find that? Because what YouTube needs to do is find those people for you. And if you aren't sure who YouTube needs to find, just parents and teachers. That's very vague, right? YouTube needs to be specific on. If I show somebody who has kids under the age of five, they're going to be three times more likely to watch your video than somebody with kids under the age of 10. Right. If you can really understand who you are creating content for, that's going to help YouTube figure out who to put your content in front of. And YouTube needs to know who to put your content in front of. If you want to get clicks, you want to get watch time, audience retention, right? So the more you can understand who you are creating content for and you create content specifically for that person, the easier it's going to be you. Easier it's going to be for YouTube to figure out who that is to push your content to more of those people. Because there's people are out there, right? There's not just one person out there that is falling under your target audience, right? There's a lot of people. Even if you think you have a small niche, there's a lot of people out there under very unique niches. But you need to help YouTube find those people. So Deborah says yes. And kids, how to teach your kids all music related. Okay, so Deborah, that's also. It's getting niche, right? You're talking about kids. Are you talking about a specific type of kid? Because remember I have kids 6 and 4 and that's going to be a little bit different type of content than kids say 10 and plus. Kids 10 and plus may be looking to learn how to play the piano and how to play different instruments like the violin and the cello and things like that. Whereas my 4 year old probably not, but I'm looking for ways to get him interested in music maybe. Right, and so you also need to figure out what type of content, who you are creating content for. Because let me break this down. If you. Let's use Deborah as a great example, okay? She's making content for parents and teachers to teach kids music. Okay? So let's say she makes a video specifically for more toddlers and it's teaching parents how to use pots and pans to make music and start teach them the basics of music. And let's say that's what we're creating content on. So YouTube is going to look at that content, look at the people watching it, which is probably going to be somebody like me with smaller children and it's going to start pumping it out to more people who are likely to watch content related to smaller children. Like maybe one thing that I may look for is activities due to an areny day or crafts to do with a five year old or crafts to do with kindergarten age kids. Right. If Deborah is creating content specifically for that age group, YouTube is going to figure out who is watching that type of content based on their past search and watch history and serve your videos to them. All right? Whereas let's say, okay, you're cranking out content like that and then all of a sudden you have a video about teaching kids how to play, you know, the next next level up on the piano, like play a full song on a piano without teaching the. That's going to confuse YouTube a little bit because it's been serving your content out to these moms with younger kids, and now you have this more advanced type of content and your current audience isn't going to click on it because that's not what they've been watching. And it's going to send negative signals to YouTube because your current audience isn't even watching it. And so YouTube, if YouTube tries to send it to people that typically watch your content and they don't click on it, that video is not going to do well and you're going to start to confuse the algorithm a little bit. So does that kind of explain how we're looking at niches and how we're making sure that we're fitting into a box enough that we still have creative freedom to talk about the things that we want, but that we're really giving YouTube enough information to find the people that are going to watch your content? So Deborah says, all my content is baby, toddler, preschool. Most of the content is 3 to 5, mostly piano based. Absolutely. Okay. I think that's what I'm facing. Confusion. Yes. So Deborah says, this is making sense. Everybody out here, how are you all feeling as well? How are you feeling about that explanation? Does that make sense or do you need me to dive into it? So I want you to. Also, here's another great way to think about your niche. You want to think about TV channels, right? Not Netflix and streaming. But you want to think like Comedy Central, right? There's a specific audience for Comedy Central. And you're not going to watch, you're not going to see any kind of sporting events on Comedy Central because that confuses people. People are going to Comedy Central to watch comedy. People are going to ESPN to watch sports. People are going specifically to the Golf Network, an entire channel just on golf, to watch golf. So if there was a movie on the Golf Network like the Devil Wears Prada or something like some rom com that doesn't have to do with golf, that's totally going to confuse the audience. And they're probably not going to see as much watch time on the Golf Channel. Right. So I also want you to think kind of in that way as well. Okay, so April has a question. April says, so if you want to expand out in a different niche, would you start a different channel? Great question. Sonya wants to know this. Know this answer as well. So there's no right or wrong answer here. What I would say is if you have a particular channel that's falling into a specific box already, a specific niche and you want to pivot. You want to go a completely different direction. You can stay on your channel and focus on it for 90 days. Like you're gonna lose subscribers. It's gonna take a little bit. You want to think of your channel as like this boat cruising in the ocean, right? Boats don't just turn around immediately, right? So you want to think of that as the YouTube algorithm, right? The YouTube algorithm is taking you, cruising you through the ocean and then you want to make a pivot. Well, it can't just pivot immediately, right? Like a zero turn lawnmower. It's got to slow down. It's got to. I'm not a captain or a boat driver at all. It's got to slow down. It's probably going to go in reverse and kind of make a turn a little bit. Then it's got to get going the right direction before it can go full speed ahead again. So that's what you want to think about your YouTube channel. If you want to take a pivot on your channel, you do need to realize it is going to take some time for the YouTube algorithm to get turned around and start picking you up again. It is possible. I worked with a channel a few years ago who had a channel specifically for food photography and they wanted to shift more towards video editing and movie making. While it was kind of in the same area, it was totally different people, right? Photographers versus cinematographers now. And so it did. It talk about three months before we could get this shit turned around, creating consistent content around that new topic. But it did. Eventually YouTube started picking it up for more cinematography type keywords and it started growing again. But there was a good three months where not only did it plateau, but it took a dive for a bit as the past audience that subscribed to it wasn't liking the content anymore because it shifted. And so that is how I would look at it. So my translucent reflection says that analogy really makes sense. And so 90 days is a good ground rule. If you want to focus, test, focus content, yes. YouTube for musicians, go 90 days. At least 90 days, right? Because you've got to give YouTube enough data. Or unless you're going to post, you know, three, four times a week, you need to think about every video you publish as a data point, right? So if you have like Sonia or April, if you already have 50, 60, 70 videos out in a specific topic or specific niche, that's 50, 60, 70 data points that YouTube has about your target audience. And that's how YouTube is sending people to your channel. Right now is all of those data points. So as you start to create new content on a new topic, those are new Data points that YouTube is kind of reevaluating and figuring, figuring out, okay, who, who best should I serve this to for them to watch? Right. Okay. April says that definitely helped and made it really clear. Perfect. I know it's kind of confusing to think about and it can be scary. We did this on my channel. If you watched my video, I did, I think two weeks ago now on my YouTube strategy. I tried to pivot my YouTube strategy back in April, no, back in January and February. And I didn't give it a full 90 days, but the writing was on the wall for me. I looked at the. I wanted to focus a little bit more on content creation and creating content, but YouTube had zoned me in on YouTube. And I love talking about YouTube. And I kind of got tired of talking about the content creation piece of everything. And so after about 60 days, for me, the writing was on the wall that I didn't want to turn this ship anymore. I wanted to get back on the last path. And so I did do it. Like I said, I stayed for about 60 days on that path and I was posting two videos a week so I could get those data points quicker. So if you think 90 days, that's about 12 weeks, it's about 12 videos of data. I had gotten to over 12 videos of data and just didn't see that pickup happening. Okay, so YouTube for musicians. And if you delete old videos that aren't that are not exactly on topic, it seemed to have hurt my channel even though the videos were not on topic. So when you delete videos, you're deleting views, you're deleting watch time. If at any point I would not delete videos, you could always turn them on unlisted. But when you delete videos, you delete everything. You delete those views, you delete that watch time. And so I don't recommend deleting videos. I would put them on unlisted. I don't think there's a single video on my channel that I've ever deleted. In fact, I do these live streams and we put them on unlisted after about a week because we know long term growth from these videos. These live streams aren't meant to happen. These are meant for me to engage with you all here actively right now. And so we just put these on unlisted after about a week because we know long term the live streams are going to hurt our channel. As opposed to help our channel. And so that's what we do. Specifically, Salma says 90 days works if you post one video a week. Yeah. So Salma, that's. That's basically saying about 12 videos. If you're doing it for 90 days, three months, that's about 12 videos. You're doing one a week. And you can look at the data in those 12 videos, see how they are performing. You can even group them in a group in your analytics to study just those 12 videos and maybe your 12 videos before that to see, is the tide changing? Is the ship starting to turn? Are you seeing it picking up a little bit? Has the ship turned completely? Maybe it hasn't gone full throttle back, but it's making that turn. And YouTube starting to recommend more views and more people to your channel based on research, I got a dip of 2,000 views. Not too happy with that. Yeah. So YouTube for musicians, if you delete videos, you delete those views in essence. So that's probably why you saw a drop in views. If you're looking at views in the past, like lifetime, when you do delete videos, you lose those views. So let's just see. So this is a great question. I'm a versatile vlogger just starting out. I have a doubt. Can I put lots of varieties of categories? No. I highly recommend sticking to a specific audience because let's say you're a vlogger and you want to talk about exercising and you want to talk about comedy and you want to talk about education and you want to talk about. I don't, I don't know what else. Lifestyle. Who is watching you? Who do you want to watch your content? If you're unsure who you want to watch your content, YouTube is going to be unsure and your audience is going to be unsure. So, for example, you all may fit into a different box here that are watching me right now. But when I come out of the gate, when I'm creating content for my YouTube channel, I'm thinking about my viewer. Is the viewer that's trying to get started on YouTube. They have tried or they are trying. They're not seeing success. They want to speed up the process. And they probably have a business and they're trying to drive leads and they're trying to get people into their funnels and into their webinars and booking clients. That's the exact person that I'm generally creating content for. So that's why you'll see a lot of my content will focus around using YouTube to generate leads. While a Lot of the content that I do talk about is specifically around YouTube, but I'm not talking about monetizing here on YouTube or how to make the most money out of monetizing on YouTube. I'm talking about how can you get found on YouTube to send people to your business, right? Catherine Manning does amazing videos on monetizing, and then she specifically for the YouTubers that want to be YouTubers that want to get the brand deals, that want to get the sponsorships, that want to make money from AdSense. That is not my audience. If you're here watching my content, that is fine that you're watching it. But when I'm creating my content, that's who I'm speaking to. That's who I'm trying to resonate with, because that's who's going to make me money in my business. And so when you're creating content, you want to think about who wants to watch your videos, who is your videos for? Just like the analogy with the Golf Channel, right? The Golf Channel isn't going to put comedies, comedy shows on there. They're not going to put home and garden shows on there, like how to redo your kitchen. And they're not going to put rom com movies on the Golf Channel because that confuses the viewer. If somebody's been watching the Golf Channel because they go there to watch golf and they go click on the Golf Channel and. And there's some rom com with like, Anne Hathaway on it, they're going to probably cancel their subscription to the Golf Network because that's not why they got the Golf Network subscription in the first place. And so you need to think of your channel like that as well. Let's see. I. It's not that you want to focus on a category. You want to think about your viewer. So I'm trying to think of an example of, okay, let's think about mom channels, right? Or parenting channels. I know Deborah here, she kind of has a parenting channel. Think about a mom channel. I start, I have a mom channel, but I couldn't combine this and my mom channel, right? Because if I got on here and I started talking about, you know, how what I bought at the dollar store to organize my closet, y' all would be like, is this woman crazy? This isn't what I'm here for. Why is she talking about organizing her pantry? Or if I talk about, you know, what I bought at the grocery store with the grocery store store haul, again, you guys are gonna be like, what the heck is this content? Why is she talking about this. This isn't what I signed up for. Right. But you need to think about your target audience. So again, my target audience is generally business owners trying to drive more traffic to their business. So I talk heavily about YouTube. Right. But again, thinking about my audience, it's that business owner I could talk about as well, instead of just YouTube. I could talk about how I promote, how I use Instagram in my business. I could talk about, you know, biggest mistakes I've made in my business, or how I set up my webinar, or how I record a webinar. Right. Or what email provider I use, or how I set up my funnel and my email provider. Because while it's not just YouTube, I'm still thinking about that viewer that's watching me. And these are all things that that viewer is interested in. Right. Because they are business owners. I'm not just thinking, okay, these are women ages 25 to 45, with kids, 2 to 3 kids, and she wears yoga pants and a top knot on her head. That's not what I'm thinking about when I'm creating this content. That is demographics. That is a demographic profile. I'm thinking about psychographics. Right? What causes these people to click? What causes these people to be motivated? What are these people's goals? Why do they do the things that they do, not just their age, gender, sex, religion, location. Right. So think about the psychographics of your viewer. Where are they at in their life? Not necessarily, you know, beginner parents, but where are they at? Trying to. Trying to start a new career, trying to find some happiness, trying to change people's lives, trying to find a meaning in life. Right. This needs to be what you need to think about when creating content. It's not just, you know, a niche. You want to think about how these people think, how these people live, what moves these people. Okay. So I hope that kind of explains niching a little bit. Summer says, what do you think about Soul Aligned Life and Business for moms as a niche? Okay, so that's great. That may be too niche. What happens when we get too niche is we're creating content that people might not even be searching for. So when you say Soul Aligned Life and biz tips for moms, that's almost like finding a needle in a haystack. Possibly. So what you want to do is do some research. Are there other channels out there on YouTube that are creating similar content? I'm not saying you go there and you copy what they're doing, but can you find other channels out there. Because if there aren't channels out there doing this particular thing, it could be there's not just enough need for it. So then you need to take a step back and think about what's the real problem with your target audience? What's the real problem they want solved? Maybe it's not Soul Aligned Life. Maybe they're actually referring to it as something else, right? Maybe since you're in that niche and that's what you use and that's what you hear a lot, the people that are searching for that solution right now don't know that's the solution, don't know that's the words that they are looking for. So you also need to make sure the words that you are using to define your target audience isn't so far in the weeds, so to speak, that people don't even know what that is. So I would keep that in mind. Salma Enchanted Vacations. Do you think having a narrow niche has a slower growth? So that's what I want you to think about. Enchanted Vacations. I want you to think about the psychographics of your audience. Why do they do what they do? Why do they need what you have? Okay. And it's not that it will have a slower growth, but the more specific that you can get and who you're speaking to. And if you can get those people to watch your videos, that's going to tell YouTube who to put your content in front of. If you can get your content in front of the right people that click on your video, watch to the end and watch another video, binge, watch your content, YouTube is going to look for more people like that. And if you can get clear and create the content that those people will click on and watch at the end, YouTube will know who to serve your audience to, who to serve your video to. Right? Who your audience is. And that's where that snowball growth will happen. If you can be clear on who you're speaking to so you can create content around that person, content that that person is going to click on, watch and binge watch your channel, probably share your content with more people similar to them. Right? So that's the whole goal. It's not necessarily niching down for YouTube, but it's niching down to create the content that your audience will want to click on, want to watch the end and want to watch more. So YouTube can say, Ah, this is the type of person that's going to watch this content. We're going to serve this video to these 10 people over here. Who are likely to watch that type of content. If those people start watching your videos, then YouTube has more data points. So this is okay, out of these 10 people, these eight people watched it. Okay. Now we're starting to define what that viewer looks like. So then YouTube will serve it out to more people. Right. So that's why it's important to really understand who you're speaking to and creating content around that specific person so YouTube can find them for you. The story. So Jamie says, does a story time coping with anxiety and stress. My experience in giving ideas and coping skills. Would that be a good channel? So, Jamie, again, think about what your audience would want to watch. What value are they going to get? What are they struggling with right now that you can make a connection with? That's how I would pull that together. This is very helpful as always. Thank you, Julia. Double A's crazy gaming. Trina is this same content will help me in the future. So if you can continue to create content within your niche. And I will tell you, I've seen this on my channel. When I put content out about Instagram, like I did a video a couple weeks ago about Instagram and social media, it confused my audience. It confused YouTube, because YouTube is used to pushing me for YouTube. And so whenever I did those videos, they typically performed below my average. But when I published a YouTube video amongst all of those videos about content creation and social media, it performed above average because that's what my audience wanted and that's the people that YouTube was recommending me to, people who wanted to learn more about YouTube. So that's why it's really important to understand who you're talking to. It's not necessarily your niche on YouTube. It's understanding your viewer. What does your viewer want to watch? Why is the viewer going to come to your channel? What are they going to get out of coming to your channel, subscribing to your channel? What are they going to get out of? Every time your video goes live and they hit, you know, watch, what are they going to get out of it? What can they expect? All right, Whether it's entertainment, whether it's motivation, whether it's education, there needs to be a clear reason why your viewer is going to come to your channel and want to watch. All right? So I hope that helps you all figure out, you know, how to set up your niche and what a niche really means. I do have your YouTube channel checklist if you're interested in making sure you have everything else set up. It's my YouTube channel roadmap and on that roadmap it's 15 pages of everything that you need to do to get set up for success. I will link that below. It's trinalittle.com roadmap and if you want to get a workflow set up in place so that you can get these videos out quicker to see if it's working as you start to shift maybe your niche and you make that turn in the ocean on your boat, you'll go to trina little.com youtubeworkflow to get the exact workflow that I use to keep all my videos organized, to research all my videos, and to make sure I'm staying consistent on YouTube. Remember, I will not be live next week, but I will be live May 31 and those will be channel reviews. So the Thursday before May 31, which is Thursday, May 27, I'll be posting on my YouTube community tab. So if you are not subscribed to my YouTube channel yet, make sure you hit subscribe right now. Because when I post on my Community tab, you will get notified that I have a community tab post if you scroll through YouTube and that's how you can submit your channel to be one. One of the channels that I will review live on Monday, May 31. You also need to be subscribed to my channel to be eligible for that and have showed up here, dropped a couple comments so that I recognize your video, your name as well. So those are the ways. That's the ways we are picking the people that we are doing channel reviews for. So I hope you have a great rest of your day and a great week. Thank you all for being here and I will see you in two weeks.