How To FINALLY Start Your YouTube channel in 2023 for your online business!

YouTube can be a massive source of leads for your online course business, but you want to do it right and you're probably time crunched so you want to do it quickly. That's exactly what I'm going to be sharing with you here in this video. How to get a YouTube channel set up so that by video one it's generating leads to your business instantly. Now, when it comes to starting a YouTube channel, as a business owner, specifically an online course creator, I know you already have a lot on your plate. There's a lot you're already juggling. So I think it's important for you to be creating YouTube content or be prepared to create YouTube content in a cycle. Because the best YouTube advice that I can give you to help you get results quicker is to be consistent on YouTube. I want to dive into a few of my tips and tricks on how to be consistent on YouTube coming up later in this video. But first, it's important for you to follow this particular cycle. So plan, implement, analyze. You're going to keep doing this cycle over and over and over again. And for me, I cycle through this cycle basically every four to five videos that I create. But before I can dig into what's involved in this cycle and how you can start implementing it, there's one thing you need to do. If you don't have your YouTube channel set up yet, or if you aren't sure if your YouTube channel is set up right, and that is the pre plan phase. Again, if you are creating YouTube for your business or for an online course creator, you are going to be building content very differently on YouTube than say an influencer or somebody who's trying to become YouTube famous. Because as a business owner, you aren't trying to go viral, which we're going to talk about more in a little bit. And you aren't trying to target the masses, you are going to find your own little unique bubble on YouTube that your audience is is hanging out. Because if you can find those people and you can create the right content for those people, the algorithm will put your videos in front of them. And that's what we want. We want people that are primed and ready to buy from you. So how do we ensure our YouTube channel is set up with this in mind? So the very first thing that you need to do in this pre planned phase is figure out why someone is going to be watching your content and want to come back and watch your content every single week. You really got to make some decisions here because I know we get a little verklempt when it comes to hearing the word niche. And you have so many passions and you want to talk about so many things, but if you're using YouTube for a lead generator, we have to be very niche. We have to be very focused in on who we want to find on YouTube. So YouTube can find those people and you can make more sales in your online course business or book more clients in your coaching business. And again, if you don't want to waste time on YouTube and you want to ensure from the beginning your videos are driving you leads, you have to be focused in on on niching to this particular person. One thing I tell my clients all the time, and also my coaching clients is if you aren't clear on who you're creating content for, how is YouTube going to be clear, how is the algorithm going to find these people? And so by you getting really zoned in on the type of person you're creating content for, and then create content for that person, that's going to drive them to your channel and the YouTube algorithm is going to do all the legwork for you and find them on YouTube to drive them to your channel. So before we even move into our cycle that I talked about, that starts with plan, you need to really spend some time thinking about the purpose of your YouTube channel. Because to get those leads and to get those sales, you need to be building loyalty and Trust here on YouTube. And because YouTube is long form content, this is one of the quickest and best ways to do that. And so what ends up happening is the people that find you here on YouTube while they're already the right person, if they're committed to watching your content and they watch a few of your videos, they're going to be a much higher conversion rate over on your sales page. And who doesn't want a higher conversion rate on their sales page? So that's why it's so important to take time right now in the pre plan phase to figure out what makes your channel unique and why somebody would want to come back and watch more videos from you. So you've probably heard the marketing rule of seven, meaning somebody needs to have seven touch points with you before they actually buy from you. What kind of content can you create here on YouTube that would ultimately make people want to watch seven videos from you? For me, my channel's purpose is to help online course creators use organic traffic from YouTube to drive more leads and sales to their business. While this is a very specific niche, I still have some wiggle room on the type of content that I can create, same as you, once you figure out who you're creating content for. Because I'm creating content for online course creators specifically to grow here on YouTube. But what other problems would online course creators be having? If you have a problem that you're dealing with right now in your online course business, let me know in the comments below so I can create that video for you, helping you out. But off the top of my mind, I know online course creators have problems with launches, consistency and copywriting and email and productivity and scheduling and building a team, right? So while my YouTube channel is built specifically to attract online course creators wanting to use YouTube to drive more leads and sales to their business, there are other topics that I can talk about that that audience would still very much be interested in and want to watch my videos. Now, if you feel a little bit stuck right here, let's get interactive. Go ahead and share with me down in the comments what exactly your YouTube channel is going to be for. And if you're having a hard time figuring out the direction of the niche, pop that in the comments and I will respond to you. And let's get some clarity for you. So again, engage with me down in the comments to help narrow in on your niche. Okay, we're done with the preplann phase. Now we can move into our cycle. Because once we have our YouTube channel clear on who we are creating content for, now, we can plan our content. There are two basically phases here in the planning cycle of building a YouTube channel for your online course business. That's planning your actual content and making a plan to create your content. Now, you can easily say, and I've seen this before with clients and students, that I'm ready to start a YouTube channel. Let's go. But then you don't make the time in your calendar and all of a sudden all of your normal tasks and all of your normal client work pops up. And that time to plan your YouTube content and film your YouTube content doesn't appear out of thin air because we only have 24 hours in a day, unfortunately. And so you have to, if you're deciding to create a YouTube channel for your online course business, look at your calendar and start adding in time to plan and create your YouTube content. Otherwise, I'm going to tell you it will happen. Let me show you an example of what my calendar looks like. And I did a complete video on how I use Google Calendar to map out how to get these things done right here. So you can check that video out after this to readjust or map out your Google Calendar to have time to create YouTube content is my Google Calendar. Like I said, I live and die by my Google Calendar and everything is color coded. I have different colors so that I can see as I'm shifting time in my day what that looks like. And I want to talk specifically about how I find time to script and record videos. So morning routine is obviously stuff with the kids, da da da da. Then get into the office, check emails, check in with my team and then this sacred time period, or this focus time that I call it, that happens every day of the week that I'm working between 9 and 11 is when I focus on work towards projects. Right. This isn't like the reoccurring things. This open for call slash client work. Down here in the purple is where I'm working with my clients and where I'm doing those day to day things working in my business. This is where I'm creating content. So I just finished wrapping up my content here the week of July 3rd. So what's going to happen is the week of July 17th, this chunk of time right here, the 18th, from 9 to 11, I will be planning my next batch of content. All right, so I will be planning two to three videos here. Again, sometimes my videos take about an hour to plan, sometimes less. So if I have extra time, I will try to do three at a time. And then this Wednesday is when I will be filming those videos. This is also when I will film reels. I also can do any of these chunks of time for reels if my team says we need to do more reels. But this is how I plan time for YouTube. So, so let's say you're just getting your YouTube channel started and you need to do the pre planning stuff. You are going to focus some of that into your sacred time, the time where you are working on tasks that help you complete a project. Like I said, if you want to see more on how I set up my Google Calendar, check the video out that I did on Google Calendar and I will link it in the description box. All right, now that you're going to have the time to do this, let's talk about the type of content you're going to be planning to create. So the first thing I want to talk about, especially if you're getting started here on YouTube, YouTube are the three different ways that you can get traffic to your videos. So there's the homepage or the browse feature which as soon as you log into your suggested videos, there is the suggested videos which when you're watching a video, YouTube thinks you may like these videos next. And then there is search, basically search based traffic, right? Each of these traffic sources have their own tactics and strategies to target. But when you're first getting started on YouTube and you're creating content specifically for your business to generate the right people to your business, you want to be focusing on search based traffic. Now this will go against what most YouTube educators talk about. They, you know, say to hit suggested and browse, but that's because they're usually educating or teaching those that want to be influencers or YouTubers and they're just trying to get more views and more subscribers. But you're a business owner and you need to be smart about your content. You don't need the masses to make six figures in your business. You just need the right people watching your videos and you're going to find those right people from the get go in search. So you're going to start creating content that is answering questions that your audience has or helping them solve a pain point that they are having so that when they go to YouTube or even Google, they type in their problem and boom, there is your video. Now what this starts to do is build like a hockey stick growth for you. So when you're first getting started out in search, the beginning line of that hockey stick is going to be you building this initial community, this initial loyal following. Because they're finding you on search. Once they watch a video of yours, the YouTube algorithm says, huh, this person watched her video, let's suggest more of her content. So now this loyal following or the small following, you know, it could be 50 people even, they're starting to find you through search and YouTube is starting to suggest, suggest them more of your videos on home and suggested. So you start to pick up more views. This then allows YouTube to start to understand the type of person who is best fit to watch your content. Because it's collecting data points and viewer behavior of those people that are watching your videos. So then it's able to find more of those people out there and put it on people who have maybe never even watched a video of yours before. It's going, your content is going on their homepage and your content is going on to their suggested. And that's when that snowball growth really happens. That hockey stick starts to take off because YouTube is starting to understand who to put your videos in front of and your content is attracting those people again. That is why it was so important in the pre planned phase to nail down who your channel is going to be for because it allows this growth to happen quickly. So now that you understand how traffic is going to work and how you're going to start getting in front of more people, I do want to talk about the types of content that you want to be creating because one of the biggest mistakes I see here is people double downing on search based traffic as in how to tutorial, basically heavy education content. While this content is very important, we call this discoverable content, right? This is like your net that you're casting out to bring people in to your channel. These are the videos that are going to show up in search. But you don't want to go 100% on discoverable content because what that does is, doesn't allow you to build a community. If you are just focusing on how to, how to, how to tutorial, tutorial, tutorial. The people that are watching you aren't building that relationship with you. They're coming for the problem that they have and then they are leaving. So what happens is you build a channel full of non subscribers, people who watch one video and leave. So the other piece of content that you need to be weaving into your content strategy is community based content. Now I will share. This is one of the hardest pieces of content for me to create because I said in last week's video how I come from like a button up kind of government job and it was hard for me to get like vulnerable and personal here on YouTube. So I will say this is one of the hardest pieces of my YouTube strategy to create. People want to get to know you because people buy from people and if you're just creating how to videos like, like everybody else, you are not standing out and you are not getting clear with your viewer on why you are the person who they should buy from or work with. So the one thing you need to be doing in your how to content as well is telling stories or weaving in examples from your own experience so they can get a little bit of a taste of who you are and start to feel that connection with you and then create these community style videos that are created specifically for people who have already subscribed and are wanting to get to know more about you. So the discoverable videos are the net that drive people in and the community videos are the videos that build deeper relationships with the people you drove to your channel. So types of content that would be really great for community content. I know vlogging is one of the first things that come to mind, but I hate vlogging. But I've done it and when I do it, my built in audience, the audience that I already have, love it. They have so much to say. The comments are off the charts. The audience retention is normally great but it is harder to do so. Other types of community content that I've done is share kind of personally what's going on in my business. I also share lessons learned and at the end of last year, I did an entire series of my journey as a business owner for the first five years in business and at the time Taylor Swift's tour was announced and it was the ERAS tour. And so I did a whole play on my ERAS as a business owner as a really personal series of videos and we feature that on my channel homepage. So as my discoverable videos go out and drive people to my channel, they want to get to learn more about me and my journey. Those videos are readily available for them. So when it comes to what is the ratio of discoverable videos versus community videos, when you are getting started and you are trying to generate leads and sales to your business, I would encourage you for every three discoverable videos that you make, really targeted for search based traffic, you make one community video. Like I said, these can be lessons learned, mistakes, sharing a story or an experience that you had that your audience would connect with. Right? You're not going to talk about your experience at Disney unless it ties into the strategies that you teach or the niche that you're in. Right? I do want to go back to making a plan. All right? You saw how I set up my Google Calendar. But I think it's really important here to understand that you need to treat YouTube planning and YouTube creation like filming and editing as an appointment, as a critical piece of your business. Just like a team call or a call with your coach or a dentist appointment or a doctor's appointment. You need to get this on your calendar and you need to stick with it if you want to see the results from YouTube. Because I'm telling you, there's so much opportunity on YouTube for business owners if they just take the time to do it strategically and stay consistent with it. For me, what my cycle looks like is every other Tuesday I plan out my videos. Then every other Wednesday right after that Tuesday I film those videos. So this is a Wednesday for me and yesterday I planned out these videos and then on the Thursday I will do any additional things that need to be done for those videos, whether it's it is B roll or screen grabs that I need to send off to my video editor. And I encourage you if you need to hire a video editor to do this, do it. Video editors don't need to be super expensive. You can find people on Fiverr, you can find people on Husky. There are multiple avenues to get a video editor so that you can just start getting content up on YouTube and utilizing this platform for organic, free leads. With that said, let's move into the second part of this cycle and into create. I want to talk about a few things to make creating video content easier, because I know this usually is where people get hung up. One place they get hung up is they plan, plan, plan, plan. And they stay in the planning phase because they're just overanalyzing and over planning. And then they get to the create and they go back to planning because that was easier than to show up on video. So I'm going to tell you, there is no secret, but it is to just turn the camera on and start making videos. Your videos are probably going to be a little bit rough. The first couple of videos, you're probably not going to like the first couple of videos as well. You may not even like your first 50 videos, but you are not going to improve and create better videos if you don't do video content. You're not going to get confident on camera. You're not going to get smooth with the way you're delivering your content on camera. If you don't do it, it. So you have to commit to just ripping that band aid off and pulling out your camera and filming content. Odds are you're overthinking it and you're the most critical person on yourself that there is and you have great content. A few weeks ago, I posted a video with lipstick on my teeth. I saw it and I was like, dang. And my marketing director was like, I didn't even see that on your teeth or I would have told you when I reviewed that video. And so that's how critical that we are. I have people reviewing my videos that didn't see the lipstick on my teeth, but I did. So get over that fear. Just turn the camera on. You also don't want to worry about it being perfect because it's not going to be perfect. I still don't feel like my videos are currently perfect. I overthink them. I overthink the topics, I overthink how I set my camera up, but I just do it. I know it's not going to be perfect. And guess what? We're all human and we want to connect with other humans. We don't want to connect with A robot. That's what AI is for, right? And so just be you. And if you slip up on words or if you have, you know, not the best office set up, who cares? People are going to connect with you. People who they can relate with. Now let's talk about setup because this is another one that I get. And you have got to keep your YouTube setup simple. I am a cautionary tale of spending hundreds of dollars, probably over a thousand dollars on this fancy camera. The camera was lots of dollars, the lens was lots of dollars and I freaking hated filming on this camera. I could never get it in focus, it never looked right and I dreaded filming with this camera and hated it. So what did I do? I just got a super simple camera. The camera I'm shooting on right now is a Sony ZV1. It looks very similar to this Canon G7X. It has a flip up screen so I can see my myself right on that screen right there. I have a microphone on the top of it so my audio is connected to my video. And I have a tiny little tripod that I can pick up and move to change angles with you. That is it. I do have a ring light in front of me. I do have a softbox light to the side of me to just balance out my lighting. But I don't overcomplicate it because the more complicated you make your setup, the less likely you're going to stay consistent with video content. Content. A few more tips on making better videos as well as you're filming them that I see so many people do wrong is when you open your YouTube videos, you don't want to waste a lot of time, meaning you don't need like this fancy branded intro. You don't need to be talking about your weekend or what the weather is. You need to get a good hook in the first three to five seconds. That is all you have for someone to decide if they're going get to keep watching your content or click on that next video. So what I see business owners do is they don't really focus on that hook. And then when I look at their audience retention graph, we see people are gone from their video within the first 10 seconds. The second thing that I see a lot of business owners struggle with on YouTube is calls to action in your videos, when to do them and how many of them to do. But what's great about YouTube is you can have these calls to action that don't sound pushy or salesy. So for example, I've been talking about starting your YouTube channel for your business here and all the steps that go into doing it. If you would like to have somebody work alongside of you as you build out your YouTube channel and strategy, get feedback on your content, ideas, your videos, your thumbnails and everything that goes into a strategic YouTube channel, I'm going to be hosting my first ever six month YouTube accelerator program. Starting off on August 14th, it's going to be six months of access to not only myself but my team of YouTube strategists as well. Our goal within the first 90 days inside of this YouTube accelerator is to get you publishing content on YouTube immediately. We're going to be helping with questions that you have, tech questions and any other issues that you have in a private Slack community. Then in the second 90 days of the accelerator we are going to be helping you tweak things and ramp up the growth of your YouTube channel, helping you dive into and understanding the analytics to look at to make this real. We want to be giving you strategic advice from data and we want to see you getting faster results from your data. Now because this program is going to be so high touch with myself and my strategist we can only take so many clients this first time around. So if you go to trina little.com apply, submit your application and we will be in touch if we have space anymore or not. This accelerator is going to be part of my 10k on replay coaching program as well. So you are going to get access to everything that we do inside of my coaching program, 10 count replay too. Like I said, spots are going to be limited because it is going to be so high touch. So get your application in now@trina little.com forward/apply. Now you see how that call to action or I mean really a sales pitch felt organic and it didn't feel sleazy and for me it didn't. So I could deliver it better. And I didn't get that feeling when I started Talking about my YouTube accelerator I was clear on why it was important and what they were going to get in that accelerator. And I didn't push anything else. I just said apply. Because what so many people do is try to get them to a lead magnet and a webinar and apply and like subscribe and comment, right? You need to be very specific on one primary call to action in each video and then one secondary. And so what I like to do is my primary call to action is always to my business. How is it going to help my business? And then you'll see at the end of my Video. The secondary call to action is going to be to watch a specific video that I think is best for you to watch next. And that's going to help my YouTube channel and my YouTube algorithm. Okay, now let's move on to the third piece of this cycle. It's so important and this that most people skip and that's analyzing. You have to be looking at your YouTube analytics to understand what is and isn't working. Otherwise, if something's not working and you keep doing it, how can you expect to see results or see growth if your audience isn't watching past the first 10 or 30 seconds or if your audience isn't clicking on your title and thumbnail? Now, when you go into YouTube analytics, there is a lot of data there. And as a creator that's just getting started here on YouTube, you want to be focusing on on certain metrics. You don't need to get overwhelmed. So the key metrics that we teach our clients and that we're going to be deep diving Inside of our YouTube Accelerator is your click through rate. So how well your title and your thumbnail cost people to click on your video. Because if people aren't clicking on it, YouTube is going to bury that content. The second data is average view duration. How long are people watching your video? Because if people aren't watching your video and they're clicking off of it within 10 seconds, again, that content's not valuable to YouTube and they're going to bury that content as well. Average percentage. Again, you want to get an idea of how good your content is. Average view duration and average view percentage are going to give you that information and help you improve your content with solid data. And then the last metric I always want my clients to be looking at is end screen click through rate. Because again, this is the piece of the YouTube strategy that's going to feed the algorithm and make YouTube happy so that it starts serving you to more people. I want to show you real quickly where you can find these metrics. So these are metrics you're going to look for each individual video. So if we go into content here and I pull up this video I did last week, you're going to go right up here to reach and you're going to see your impression. Click through rate. That is how well your title and your thumbnail cause people to click. Next you are going to look at engagements and you're going to go down here to average view duration. So I got people to watch over seven and a half minutes of my content on average or over 30% of my video. Now I would like to get this number up to 50. That's what I'm shooting for, to get people to watch 50% of my content. But I still got people to watch over seven minutes of my video. And then if I move this right here, you can watch this graph to understand when people are dropping off of your video, what people are re watching. You see, see these spikes? This means people are rewatching something right here. And this gray line shows where my videos audience retention performs on average. And this one did really well. So it did take a dip right here, but then it balanced out and actually ended up performing above audience retention for me. And then the other element I want you to look at is this end screen click through rate again. This gets people to binge watch your content. The rule of seven, seven marketing touches to get somebody to buy from you. So the more content you can get people to bing from you, the better. This one did perform a little bit below average for my channel. So what I would do is I would go in here and review what my call to action was and how I said it or how I delivered it to see if I did something differently. This causing this number to be lower. And those are the main metrics when you're getting started with that you should be watching. Trust me. YouTube can drive you leads to your course or your coaching business for literal years. And if you're finally ready to get your YouTube channel up and running, running for your business and driving you consistent sales, make sure you apply to that YouTube accelerator again. It is kicking off August 14th and you can go to trina little.com forward/apply to submit your application and then you'll hear from us for next steps. And while you wait to hear from me for those next steps on your application, watch this video on your screen right now where I deep dive into the strategy behind using YouTube to drive more leads to your business.