Just Getting Started On YouTube? DO THIS!

Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. My name is Trena. If you are new here and this channel is all about giving you the confidence to show up on video and more specifically YouTube. Because today we're going to talk about what you should do on your YouTube channel to make it better. So many times I talk about things that you can do, but I don't give enough real world examples and I totally understand that. So I've taken a lot of your requests and your advice and today I'm going to walk through three different YouTube channels. These are students of mine currently going through my program Video Strategy Academy. So that's why they're getting this in depth review on this video. Now, before we dig into these channels and these examples, if you are interested in getting into my program Video Strategy Academy and having the chance for me to review your channel, make sure you click the link below to get on the Video Strategy Academy wait list. Being on that wait list gives you the first opportunity to get inside of my program and also receive special pricing as well. So these three channels that I'm about to walk through are all under 500 subscribers. So they are small channels. So let's begin. And if this is a series you would like to see here more often on my channel, leave a comment, more reviews please. And I'll make sure to incorporate more videos like this into my content plan. So the first channel up is Tiffany. And Tiffany, as you can see, is an accountant and she has a beautiful channel banner on her channel. What I would recommend for her channel banner though is moving this text over to the middle. Channel banners are a little bit tricky, especially when you're trying to figure out the dimension for all the different platforms like mobile device, iPads, laptops and desktops and TVs. So I suggest keeping all of your information in the middle so it shows up no matter what platform you're on. This probably is being cut off a bit on mobile devices and I can't even read what this says because of the link right here. So keep all of your important information right here in the middle of your banner. A couple other tips about your channel banner. I would zoom in just a little bit more on yourself. Like this channel icon is great zoomed in on you because we can really see your eyes. I would suggest maybe just a little bit closer here and as far as text on your channel banner, I think it's great to have your business here bask in accounting, but instead of for creative entrepreneurs, can you tell me like what am I going to get out of watching your videos. If I want to hit the subscribe button, what are you going to provide for me? Remember, we are all selfish people and we want to know what you're going to do for us, unfortunately. So could you say something like helping you learn your numbers or since you're talking about a lot of tax deduction here, maybe you say something like getting your taxes understood or understanding your taxes, something that your content is really going to focus on. So something for me, my channel is all about getting you the confidence to show up on video. All right? So people know they can come to my channel to get confident about video. So what can you propose to us here on that channel banner that's really going to push me over the edge to click subscribe. Now, Tiffany is a newer channel, but I would definitely update your homepage here. So the way to update your homepage is you're going to go to this blue button on your homepage that says customize channel and that's going to give you the features to make changes here on your homepage. What I would suggest featuring on your homepage is some bingeable playlists. Now, again, we know Tiffany is very new. She only has about nine videos. But we can see there is a theme here. Home Office Deduction Workshop. Home Office Deduction Workshop. Maybe we can put this into a playlist of two videos. It says everything you need to know about Home office deductions. That way, if that's on your homepage and people come here and see that playlist, they're more likely to click on that and potentially watch two videos of yours since they're in a playlist. You can add these playlists by going again into customize your channel. And we're going to scroll down here to the bottom. You're going to add a section and then you're going to go to created playlists and then you're going to go to single playlists and you're going to find that playlist that you created, that home deduction playlist and feature here on your homepage. Again, that just makes your homepage look a little bit more professional. I would feature a video here as well. For your channel trailer or your feature video. It doesn't have to be some special video, some specific channel trailer. I always suggest adding maybe a video that's getting you the most subscribers so you can find that in your analytics, but featuring a video here on your homepage so it automatically plays when people land on your page. Another suggestion for Tiffany is definitely titles. So titles need to really make me want to click. We don't want to think about necessarily SEO here. We want to think about the human element. What Paint Pain point is that person having that's already searching for this topic that's going to make them want to click on your video. What can you provide them? They're going to say, that's the video I want to watch. So Taxes for Creative Entrepreneurs Itemized Deduction versus Standard deduction. Can you tell me in this video like how to differentiate item deduction versus standard deduction? Or could you position this video like how you can save more money with specific tax deductions or lower your taxes doing this one thing that's much more appealing to me to click on than taxes for creative entrepreneurs. Because what if I I don't consider myself a creative entrepreneur. Side note, this is something that I struggled with too. I considered myself a YouTube strategist for creative entrepreneurs. But I had people come to me say, well, I'm not a creative. Are you right for me? Is your course right for me? So really think about are you putting yourself too much in a box and think about the bigger picture. Like what are you providing value to for your target audience? Next, let's move on to I architect again. Same notes about the channel banner here. What can you really pitch to me to make me want to subscribe? New home architecture videos every Friday. That's great. I know you're posting every single week, so I probably want to subscribe to make sure I don't miss the video. But what am I going to get out of subscribing? Are you going to teach me how to make my home look like those pretty homes in Architect Digest? What are you going to give me here on your channel to make me want to subscribe and come back every Friday to watch your videos? Moving on down here, you can see she does have thumbnails for some older videos, but the newer ones don't have thumbnails. And I know it can be hard sometimes to find the time to create thumbnails. Sometimes it's just easier to get this content up here. But thumbnails are going to be your main marketing material to get people to click on your videos. So you definitely want to take some time. Inside of my Video Strategy Academy, I teach you how to create templates. So like three to four templates for your thumbnails so it's much more easier for you to crank out and save you time. So you are putting these thumbnails on your videos to make sure people are going to click on Your video. Some things to always have on your thumbnail is a photo of you. So she's doing it great. She has a photo of herself. But I would also incorporate some kind of bright color. Remember, people are looking at YouTube on a white background or a black background. So how can you make your thumbnail, thumbnail pop? So bright colors, like maybe an orange, maybe blue. We use pink. You also want to make sure you have very minimal text. So like three to five words that are going to grab people's attention. Those words on your thumbnail should really tie into the title as well. Now, if we look at her channel, she does have some playlists to feature here on her homepage, but you can see there's some big playlists here. So 80, 20, 27 videos. I suggest having around three to five videos in a playlist so that you can entice people to watch one video after another. Once you have some playlists set up, definitely feature them here on your homepage and break them up a bit so that there's some breathing room here on your page. So it just doesn't look like video after video after video. So something that we do here on my channel, we have vertical playlists versus horizontal to give it some white space. If we just did a bunch of these, it would just look like video after video. And another tip is make sure your playlists pitch some type of value. So again, you can see here the best ways to grow a YouTube channel in 2019. Basically, that needs to be updated now that we're halfway through 2020. Again, what are they going to get out of this playlist? What do they want to learn? Really pitch that value to get them to click on that playlist. One other thing about I architects videos. So if we go here and watch, she is repurposing her Facebook lives and this is a mistake. I see so many people doing. Here's the problem with repurposing live videos on YouTube. It just doesn't work. I know we want to save time and we want to utilize the content that we're creating, but even when you go live on YouTube, the value of that two hours after you've gone live is pretty much next to nothing. Even if you look at your audience retention, you're probably going to see most people leave your video, any type of live video, within the first 10 seconds. That's just not how people consume content on YouTube and be like posting like a Pinterest image on Instagram. It wouldn't really fit. People wouldn't really get it. It wouldn't really engage people. So what I suggest doing is focus on creating YouTube specific videos and then taking that video and repurposing on Facebook. So what I do with all my videos when I'm shooting, I'm shooting this YouTube version right now. And at the end I will have a YouTube call to action. Then I will shoot a different ending. That'll be a Facebook call to action. So like this page, leave me a comment below. And I will also do an Instagram TV ending as well. So when we're editing it, we can just splice in those endings to make it look more specific to the platform. And I'm maximizing the time I'm spending creating this one video and using it on as many places as possible. So I want you to kind of reset your mindset. Instead of thinking about taking your lives and repurposing them, take your YouTube video and repurpose them on Facebook. Because YouTube is searchable and Facebook isn't. And that's why it's so important to focus on YouTube content as opposed to Facebook Live. Now, this third YouTube channel is a little bit different. She is focused on selling a product. And so the first thing again, when I come to this channel, I'm looking at the channel banner. I would suggest possibly putting your actual business name here. Your brand message just kind of seems like it's incomplete. It feels like it's a filler. Maybe you put a template here. I know they didn't. I know what they're going with because I know them. They're a student inside of Video Strategy Academy. But again, I would just put your business name here or your name here right on top, even if it's your channel name. And then maybe just rephrasing this in a way that gives value. Like are you going to make sure that they have the coolest water bottles around or your business will have the best swag. However you want to propose that value. Like what's your unique position here? They do have a couple videos here. So even if we go here videos, you can see a couple and some of them do have quite a few views here. Now, when it comes to videos for a product business, think about what problem is your product solving and then talk about that and incorporate your product into that video. Instead of just branded swag as gifts for remote staff and customers. Is that what your audience is going to YouTube to search for? Maybe they're looking for unique gifts for clients or make your gifts better than everybody else's. Think about that title. That's really going to make people say, yeah, that's the one I want to watch. Or specifically for this channel, since it's talking about reusable water bottles. Could you talk about the benefits of using reusable water bottles? Remember, even if this is just one video you do or a series of videos you do, it could live on YouTube for years to come and still drive you traffic. In fact, I have a video from 2017 about writing a script that still to this day gets views and gets me leads to my business every single day because it's that evergreen content. So could you talk about the importance of using reusable water bottles or why it. Or think about all those topics that could get people to watch your video and then want to use your product then? When it comes to titles, I get where you're going with custom swag for virtual events or branded swag as gifts for remote staff. But how can we change that title to make people want to click on it? Remember, we want to make them clickable for humans. So maybe something like the best gifts to let your employees know you care or the best gifts to show your employees appreciation. Something like that. A little bit more clickable than just branded swag as gifts for remote staff and customers. Now, I do have a checklist on everything to go through to make sure your YouTube channel is all set up for success. If you want to grab my YouTube launch roadmap, I'm going to link to it right now on your screen. It's also going to be in the description box below, so make sure you grab it. It's going to go through all of these things that I talked about here today and help you get started on the right foot here on YouTube. And then once you download that checklist, make sure you watch this video that's on your screen right now because it's going to walk you through everything step by step to get started on YouTube. So click that video and I will see you over there.