How I would Start A YouTube Channel with ZERO Subscribers

If you took the leap and started a YouTube channel, congrats. But maybe you're hearing crickets and nobody is watching. Nobody's subscribing. What should you do now? First, I'm going to be the bearer of some bad news. Your YouTube channel is just not going to grow overnight. It doesn't matter how perfect your tags or keywords are, it's going to take some time and some practice and really some perseverance to grow a YouTube channel in 2021. But I am not here to rain on your parade because in this I'm going to share all the top things, my best tips for what I would do if I were in your shoes, and starting with 0 subscribers and 0 views. My name is Trena. Welcome back. If you are new here and on this channel, I help course creators and coaches start using YouTube as an organic traffic source to their business that helps make them more money. And again, if you're starting with 0 subscribers and you have a business model, this is going to be great for you. You need to realize when you're starting, starting at zero, you need to be true to yourself. You're getting on a platform that may already be saturated and you're trying to grab a new audience and bring them into your world. So it's going to take a little bit for them to be convinced that you're the place to be or you're the channel to subscribe to. So as you start creating more content, those people are going to see you again and again and again. And it's going to take some time for them to say, wow, this person is creating consistent content. It's really good. It's helped me before and I'm good, going to subscribe now. So just because you post one video, it does not mean somebody's going to know like and trust you. You've got to prove to them that you're going to consistently show up and consistently give good content. Remembering that even for me when I got started, because I thought I was all about the numbers. Subscribers, subscribers, subscribers. It's going to take you a little bit to build that trust and you need to accept that and not use subscriber numbers as whether you're successful or not on YouTube, that is a huge thing that I would do if I was starting at zero again. Look at the other metric that matter and not necessarily the subscriber number. Beyond that, the first thing that I would do is research. So you need to really determine what your channel is going to be known for. You can't just come into the YouTube world and be an Instagram expert or a cooking channel or a DIY channel. You need to be very specific in who you are creating the content for. The more specific you are for that specific viewer, the more YouTube can figure out who to put your content in front of. For example, a student of mine inside a Video Strategy Academy came to me with her channel where she was creating money saving tips. Pretty saturated, hard to break out. So when we did the research and we dove into what her audience was looking for, she niche down or she went down the lane of frugal tips or frugality tips and she was able to get 1 million views in less than five months with a channel. It came to Video Strategy Academy with about 200 subscribers now, over a million views and over 20,000 subscribers in five months. So that's the important to really dive into your research and figure out who your channel is going to be targeting. You can't just be somebody for everyone. Okay. Even if you're a cooking channel, what type of cooking? I'm going to be looking for cooking channels that are going to help me learn recipes that my kids are going to like because I don't want to create more than one meal. So are you going to be creating kid friendly meals? Are you going to be creating large family meals? Are you going to be creating solo people meals? Right. These are all different types of channels that you could dive into. Are you going to be doing keto friendly vegan plant based paleo? Right. You need to know who your ideal audience is so you can create the right content for them. And that's all with researching. Once you've researched and you've got some ideas, which I talk about in nauseum here on my channel, make sure you subscribe and I will link to a couple of videos up here and in the description box, all about finding video ideas and researching your video ideas in detail. But next I want to talk about what I would do if I was starting with zero when it comes to titles and thumbnails. The YouTube world has changed a lot within the past five years that I've been here. And you need to spend time on your titles and your thumbnails because it doesn't matter how great your content is, if nobody's clicking on it, they're not going to see it. And so what I always like to do is determine what my title and thumbnail is going to be before I even turn my camera on to record my content. That way I can be sure that my hook ties in with my title. So if somebody clicks on it, they are hooked in and they continue watching. And I want to make sure I'm getting the best thumbnail when I'm filming. And I have my hair and makeup done because I don't look like this on most days. So I need to make sure I'm getting my thumbnail as well. And that text on your thumbnail should not just be the title of your video repeated in text. You want to use the text on your thumbnail. Minimally. Three to five words need to grab people's attention. Start to hook them into a story. You continue to tell that story with the title and then you continue that story in with the hook of your video. 100%. This is not an easy process process, but it is a must, especially if you're starting with 0 views and 0 subscribers. You've got to find a way to get people to want to click on your video. Because if you're putting content out and people aren't clicking on it when YouTube shows it to people, it's going to get buried under the billions of videos on YouTube. So this is why it's so important in a critical phase when you're getting started is really think through your titles and thumbnails. Because if you don't get the click with your title and thumbnail, you're not going to get the watch time. Which leads into the next thing that I would do if I was starting at zero. Be a friend of mine to the YouTube algorithm and not necessarily watch subscribers, but watch your watch time, your traffic sources and your audience retention. Remember I said I wouldn't focus on subscribers so much if I was getting started. Again, these are things that I would look at instead. When you upload your video, it will take some time. It will say processing. And that means YouTube is going through your video to figure out what you are saying. YouTube can understand what you are saying. That even if you put 0 tags on your video, you, YouTube will still know where to categorize you. Then the algorithm will try to find people who have watched that type of content before. So let's say again, you're talking about Paleo meals for kids. YouTube is going to find people who have watched videos around Paleo meals for kids and serve your video maybe in suggested maybe on the browse. And if your title in your thumbnail doesn't get the click, that's bad, right? YouTube is going to put you out. YouTube is going to do some promoting. So let's say you get the click, then what? YouTube is going to say, are people watching this video? So that first metric is click through rate. Did people click on that video? YouTube put it in front of people. Did people click on it? Yes. Okay, next step. Are people watching it? How good is your content? Are people getting to the end? Because you need to understand the longer people watch your video, the more ads YouTube can play on that video. Thus the more money YouTube makes. So YouTube will push your content if people click on it and if people watch it to the end because they're going to make more money on your content. YouTube also wants to ensure it's good content by engagement. So are people commenting? Are people liking? Are people sharing it? These are all things that you should think about when you are writing your video game plan. Include calls to action or get people to engage with your content as well. Again, I didn't do this enough when I first got started. I didn't pursue enough commenting, asking questions and really looking at YouTube as a social media platform, kind of like Instagram. So that's what I would do differently now too if I was starting with zero ways to engage with your community in the comments. Because again, if people are engaging and people are watching to the end, this is sending signals to YouTube that this is good content. We should push it to more people. I like to think of it as a game of Mario Brothers, right? Remember when you went down that green tube and you collected all those gold coins? Are people clicking on your video great gold coins? Are people watching your video to the end great gold coins? Are people commenting? Are people liking great, all gold coins to make your video more valuable? And YouTube's going to push it to more people. Let me know if that makes sense. Leave me any questions you're having about the whole YouTube algorithm down in the comments because I really want you to understand how this process works. The YouTube algorithm gets a bad rap that it's all about keywords and it's all about search, but when in reality it's all about good quality content. So the next thing that I would do if I was starting with zero views and zero subscribers is do about six to eight test videos. What do I mean by test videos? So you want to figure out first of all what content you're really excited to talk, and second of all, what content your audience is going to be interested in watching, right? And kind of third is what content is YouTube going to pick up. So obviously you're going to be falling into a niche, right? And so don't get so wrapped up on the specific keywords and Just do about six test videos. Just put videos up that you're excited to create and look at the data from there. You can look at the search terms that are driving your traffic and kind of hone in on a strategy. But I really recommend you just getting some videos out and looking at the data. This is going to help you create better thumbnails. This is going to help you create better videos that people are watching longer. I think what I did is I didn't have enough depth of my content. Yes, I dove into YouTube and how to use YouTube, but there are other topics around YouTube that I should have talked about. So I kind of got held into this particular box and I didn't necessarily share more of my story. So people came to my channel, people watched my content and then they left. They just came for the content and left. I didn't build that relationship with them. So they wanted to subscribe and come back again and again and again. And so when you are thinking about those six videos, I would also think about sharing more stories about yourself because the more you can make a connection with your audience than just giving amazing content like how to content that they come and leave for, you've got to make that connection and build those relationships. The next thing that I would have done is think about series that I could create. This makes people excited to come back for the next one in the series. Or for you to create an entire playlist to get people to binge watch your content. But thinking about every first of the month is a mistake series where you share mistakes or every first of the month is a new dessert video. What is a series that you can have on your channel that people are really excited about having? And then again you can make a playlist so they can watch it back to back to back to back. Kind of like on Netflix when a new season comes out, right? Or like a mini course. So if I was going to do a channel on Paleo recipes and I don't know where this is coming from just out of my head, but if I was going to do channel on Paleo recipes, maybe I would do a breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack using sweet potatoes. I don't know. Again, just throwing this out there. If somebody's got a lot of sweet potatoes or they're a fan of sweet potatoes, they know that you have a breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks on sweet potatoes. Then you can put it into a playlist and say something like paleo recipes with sweet potatoes. Obviously not super enticing, but you get the point how you can Create this kind of binge able videos that people want to watch back to back. Remember, the longer people watch watch your videos, the more videos of your channel that people watch, the more valuable your channel becomes to YouTube. And YouTube's gonna do all the promoting for you if you just play their game. All right, I got two more things that I would do if I was starting a YouTube channel at zero. Before I jump into them, let me know if you're starting your YouTube channel what it is about. Let me know in the comments what your YouTube channel is about. Whether you're getting started with zero or maybe you're at 10,000 subscribers, I'd love to hear what kind of channels you all have. Next thing that I would do is study my analytics. We've talked a lot about analytics here today. But when I got started, I didn't even look at that. I consider myself not a numbers person, so I just felt like it wasn't important, I didn't want to learn it. But then once I dove into it and I started to realize YouTube's giving me the answer to success, I really need to understand this. So you need to take time every single month to look at your analytics when you are getting started. Even though it may be a little bit of data, it's still some data to work on. Remember, you want to be looking at things that your click through. Rate how well your title and your thumbnail are getting people to click on your videos. How long are people watching your videos with your audience retention graph, why are people leaving your videos? Studying that so you can make better content Looking at keywords that are driving traffic to your videos, can you create more content around those keywords? Looking at suggested videos, driving traffic to your content, Is that a different channel? What kind of content is that channel making? Right. If you can take the time to look look at your analytics every single month, I promise you it will be a lot easier and you'll grow a lot faster if you do this. Okay. This is the one thing where I promise you you can grow faster if you look at your numbers. And if I was Getting started with 0 subscribers and 0 views, I would get over myself. So when I got started on YouTube, I was so worried about everything being perfect. If I was starting over, I would just let my personality out. When I first created this couple videos, I felt and pretty much looked like a robot and I wasn't myself. It took a while until I got to the point where I could talk with my hands like this and wear the pink lipstick and talk to you more like we are friends at a coffee shop. That's what people are going to connect with. People are going to connect with people that feel real, that feel like they could be friends with outside of this YouTube world. And so I would just kind of do get out of your head and worry about everything being perfect and just try to be you. I will have a dance party before I turn my camera on so I can feel good about myself and just think about somebody on the other end. I'm thinking about you and how this content is really going to help you, how it's going to make a connection. And so if I was Getting started with 0 views and 0 subscribers again, I would try to let my personality out, not try to copy somebody else, but really let who I am as a person get through that lens somehow so you could feel connected with me. And I've been really working on this this past year. It's not an easy one to do and it's taken me a long time, but I would say it's the secret sauce to growing a YouTube channel that a lot of people don't necessarily talk about. You can study your numbers and your analytics all you want, but if you aren't showing up as you, you're not making that connection with that viewer that wants to come back and watch you again and again and who wants to support you, it is going to take time, consistency, and plenty of practice to see your YouTube channel grow. There may be videos that you post that are flops. I still to this day have videos that I think are going to be awesome and they totally flop. Don't worry, that's normal. Just stick with it. Come back every single week. Show up for your audience, even if it's just one subscriber, that's one person giving time in their day to you to watch your content. And I promise you, if you keep showing up, if you keep practicing, if you keep looking at your analytics, you're going to show up stronger and stronger every single week. And if you are ready to commit and show up consistently, watch the video that's on your screen right now, because I'm sharing the five things I do every single week to help me continue to grow my YouTube channel. I'll see you over there. And don't forget to hit subscribe on this channel because you're not going to want to miss a single episode.