LIVE YouTube Channel Reviews!

Hi. I think we are live so just double checking, making sure all the tech is set up. It's been a while since I've jumped on here live so if you are watching, I'd love to know we're good to go. Let me know in the comments if you're ready for the holidays. Are you done shopping? Are you ready to get this holiday season in full swing? Let me know if you are ready. I just want to make sure everybody's in here and good to go. We're gonna do channel reviews. I already had a couple people volunteer so it looks like a mom for every season. I really love that name. Is going to get a channel review and Courtney Cochran. I think I have my own channel. Courtney. I actually since you don't have a channel icon yet, I'm going to have to pass on that so. Because I would like to have people review channels who have all the elements set up. So we are going to go to John Morris is the other person. So we are going to do a mom for every season in John Morris. Organize to save space. If I got some time, I will get to yours. We'll see how well these go. Don't forget you guys, if you hit that share button for me to let your friends and followers know that I do these live YouTube channel reviews. It just helps if we get more people on here to get more engaged. I want to know if you're watching right now or the replay. Do you set goals for your YouTube channel? I know we're at the end of the year and we're getting close to all the goal setting things and thinking about what we want to achieve in 2019. Let me know if you set goals for your YouTube channel in particular if you don't. Totally. Okay. Because I'm going to be on TubeBuddy at 3pm Eastern Standard Time. So in about two hours I'm going live on TubeBuddy to talk about the the three goals you should set for your YouTube channel. So if you're not sure what goals you should be setting, make sure you join me in about two hours. But I want to say hello to everybody who's here. Makeup by Christina, John, Carrie, Jordan, Nella. Hi everybody. I'm so excited you're here. Carrie is setting her goal is to set a new video live. John sets goals. Nella does too. That's awesome. I love hearing people setting goals because I realized you don't set goals. You don't have an actual roadmap to get where you want to be. And so I'm excited to be invited over on TubeBuddy to talk about goal setting in 2019. All right. Hi, Donnella. I'm glad you're here as well. So let's go ahead and jump into some channel reviews. I'm gonna get this set up. I'm going to click on a mom for every season first here. So let me get to her channel and then I'll start sharing my screen. So a month for every season. Can you tell me what your name is so that I can call you by your name? Because I'd rather call you by your name. And we will get this party rolling with channel reviews. So I'm going to share my screen here. I'm going to try to be doing these channel reviews more often than so make sure you're subscribed. My goal is to start doing these every Wednesday. So that's going to be a goal of mine. Hi, Carmel. Carmelita. Carmelita. Hi, Karen as well. Oh, great. Taryn, a mom of every season. Okay. So, Taryn, the first thing I see on your YouTube channel is obviously you. I see, I think your kids. So be aware of the YouTube banner. It may cut some things off your sleep. Little daughter here is a bit cut off. So careful with these channel banners. Also I see motherhood, lifestyle, DIYs. What I tell everybody who comes to me that works with me, whether who is a student of mine or a client of mine, is you need to have a clear value proposition for your channel. So yes, you talk about motherhood, lifestyle and DIYs, but why? What's the value? Can we go a level deeper? So I too have a mom channel and I'm just starting to formulate it and grow it as well. And I've decided to niche down to moms who are stressed and whose to do list keeps piling up and they're not enjoying motherhood anymore because they find themselves doing everything to get things done and they just need to simplify life. And so what my channel is going to be about is how to simplify your busy life. So then I'll be focusing on content like setting routines and creating schedules. And so that's who I'm specifically talking to. I feel like what you propose here is a little bit broad and vague. And unfortunately, what happens when you try to be something for everybody, you end up being someone. You end up being no 1 for everyone. I'm sorry that this is glitchy, Courtney as anybody else having problems. Hi, Carmen from Phoenix. Hi, Carmelita. I think I said hello. Todding games. But so the first thing I need you to do for your channel here is really focus on who you are serving and why. What's the value? All right, so then the next thing that I see is your featured video. I would suggest this being a channel trailer and it would not necessarily be a channel trailer for you, but maybe get to know Taryn and this video plays. This video tells you, you know, who you are, your value proposition, and also why they should subscribe. What's the purpose in subscribing. And so that's what I would really focus on here for this video and for anybody else who does not have a channel trailer, that's what I would add to your channel is to just create a max 60 second long video and tell people who you are and what your value is. Why should these people subscribe to you? And it should only be 60 seconds. So that's the next thing that I would do with your channel icon too. It's a little bit further away, so maybe zoom in a bit. I think it's a great picture. I love the background, but we need to see you so your audience knows who they are talking to. I'm sorry, this is a bit glitchy. I see it's a little fuzzy. If you can let me know in the comments if you guys are all having or if you guys are all okay with this, let me know. I'm not sure what the problem is, but yeah, so I would update for anybody else. Your channel icon should definitely highlight you and we should be able to see the whites of your eyes. And it just a lot. It's just a internal thing that people are able to connect with you if they see the whites of your eyes. All right, good. People are seeing it fine. I'm sorry if you're having issues. Maybe it's your Internet. I know on my side it looks a little fuzzy. So it could be Internet connectivity. The next thing I look at with every single channel is the homepage. And so right now you just have uploads. I think maybe you are newer and maybe not as many videos. So we've got some videos here. What I would do, Taryn, is to create eight channel sections that highlight your playlist and your playlist should highlight again your value proposition. So right now your playlist that you have are how to live your best mom life. I would definitely add that to your home. If you go into your channel and you log into it, you should see like a little plus sign that says add section and that's how you can add section and Add that I would also focus on. So for my. My YouTube channel, here, my tips with Trina, I have sections like how to grow a YouTube channel, how to brand your YouTube channel, video ideas for 2019. So when somebody comes to my channel, they can instantly see through my homepage the topics that I talk about on my channel. Does that make sense, Taryn, how's that work for you? Does that understand? Am I clearly explaining how that should look? The next thing that I want to look at is your about section. And this usually goes unnoticed by most people. And what happens is one of the things people can see when they hover over Your icon in YouTube is your about section. And this is going to be basically your pitch to get people to get to your channel. And you also want to incorporate those keywords that you have speaking. I want to see if you had any channel keywords. So here and see, you have channel keywords. So you don't have any channel keywords. What I would suggest doing is add keywords that describe what your channel is going to be about. So let's look at some of your videos being present with your kids. Let's see DIY projects. Anything that definitely describes your video. That would be great. Hello, Low budget gaming. Hi, April, Jordan. I'm so excited you guys are here. So that's what I would add in your about section. Once you have those channel keywords, adding those keywords into your about section, really expand explaining again that value proposition that you come down to on why people should subscribe to your channel. Okay, I hope that helps you out here, Taryn. As you're getting started for 2019, I'm gonna go ahead and see what kind of questions we got before we jump over to John. I think. Is John still here? Because I was going to. He jumped in here with volunteering. John Morris would be next. So Carmen says channel trailer is definitely on my list to do. Yeah, me too. I haven't done one on my mom channel, and the one on this channel is really old. And so I haven't done one recently either. So I totally get it. Yep, John is still here. Okay. Any other questions that Taryn might have or you guys might have about the review that I gave her channel? Again, I'm just looking surface value. So I'm looking as someone brand new to your channel. Are you enticing me to subscribe? Are you enticing me to click on another video and watch? That's all I'm looking at in the front end of your channel. Now, if you were a client of mine or if you're in my program, I'm able to get access to your analytics. I request access and I can look deeper like channel keywords that are driving you traffic or traffic sources and audience retention and those types of analytics to really help you grow your YouTube channel. But doing these, I'm really only able to see surface value. And so that's I'm getting feedback on how do you add channel keywords. It is in your YouTube creator studio and then you go to advanced, I believe. I think I have a video on it. So you could check that out, but it's right there. Okay, so let's pull up John, see if I can find him on here. John Morris. Again, you guys ask me questions as we go through this. I love this being a more of a conversation with all of you so that we can really help with a YouTube channel moving forward. Let me see. I think I need to pop over to the video to find his channel right now. So I also need a tip. What should I do on my YouTube channel? Got any video or any video of it? I also need a tip. What should I do on my YouTube channel? I'm not sure what you mean. Courtney, can you go a little deeper? You get channel reviews here by being here when I go live and volunteering. So most of these people got here when I went live and so they got first place preference and that's how I do that. I to know when I go live. Just make sure you are subscribed to my channel and that you also click the reminder, the little bell icon. So you know when I go live, anyone can get a review. Low budget gaming. I just open it to making sure that you're here live. And when I go live, you volunteer. So that's basically the rules to doing this. Can you please share a link to the trello workflow that we can buy from you? Karen? Yes, actually I believe. Oh, it's not in the description, but it's trina little. My name.com forward slash YouTube workflow. All one word YouTube workflow. Harley, thank you so much for letting her know. Great. Okay. Geezer Skate company. Are you doing your mom channel? Yep. I have been doing a new video every week for four weeks. Awesome. Okay, so now let's do John's channel. I'm going to share my screen so we can all take a look at John's channel and see how he can make his YouTube channel even better. All right, so your channel trailer. I mean your channel icon. I'm sorry. So many different things. Your Channel banner seems a little bit wordy. I love that you have brand new content each Tuesday and Friday. Perfect, perfect. But I feel like John Morris, art from the heart, art, original music, lifestyles, art teaching and travel is a lot going on right there. You don't need to put your website because you can add it to your link. So if you go into your about section, you can add your links there and you can add your website link there. So you don't need to put it on your channel banner to take up that space again, I think maybe you need a little bit of focus on what your value proposition is. So we have art, we have music, we have life skills, we have art teaching and we have travel. So why would I want to subscribe to your channel? What, what is your passion here? Do you want to talk about art and art teaching? Because those would be a great niche to focus on or do you want to talk about life skills? That's a different topic. So somebody who came to your channel for art and art teaching would potentially get confused or not understand why they are subscribed to your channel. When you post a life skills channel because they subscribed for art and art teaching. Does that make sense? John, let me know if you're following me if this makes sense, like really understanding who you're speaking to. I want people that are going to subscribe to your channel to stay subscribed to your channel, right? I want them to come back and watch more videos. And so sticking to one niche and one topic will really help you grow. Especially on a small channel, like 200 subscribers at the beginning. You're focusing on that one niche so that you can build this loyal following that will help you grow your YouTube channel. They'll come back and watch every single video of yours and help you get audience retention and watch time, minutes. As you get bigger, you can start expanding, expanding a little bit into more topics. But when you're building this smaller channel, it's really important to focus in on that one topic. I would for you add a channel trailer again, letting people know who you are, what value you're going to bring to me. Because when somebody comes to your channel for the first time, they don't care who you are. They're coming to see, like, what can you do for me? What are you going to do that's going to help me out. And so if you're going to focus on art and art teaching, maybe your value proposition is helping the beginner artist start selling their art. All right? And then you talk about different ways to sell your art. And so if I'm an artist and they want to know how to sell my art and make money from my art, I know I'm subscribing to you and I know I'm coming back to watch your videos every Tuesday and Friday because I want to make some money with my art and I know you're going to tell me how to do it. So when you're focusing on that really core audience, that's the secret to growing on YouTube because they're going to watch your videos and they're going to give you that audience retention that is so important for you to grow your channel on YouTube. Again, I think you have playlists here, okay? So what I want you to do with playlists is playlists should be titled the exact same way as videos. You need to have a value proposed title here. So art tips with John, maybe this is. Let's go with selling the art. So let's title this playlist the best ways to make money from your art. That's the title of your playlist, okay? That can now rank on YouTube as a playlist and then you'll have all these other videos in it. And so let's say how to make more money with your art. That's the title of the playlist in that you can say how to make $1,000 with your art this month. Where to find places to sell your art, how to hold a successful gallery show for your art. These are all videos that would fit into that playlist to create a bingeable playlist. You want to think about these playlists as seasons on Netflix. So when a brand new season comes out on Netflix, people are binge watching it right back to back to back. And you want to think about your playlists as these seasons that people are going to watch back to back to back. Now, you don't have to release all these videos the same day, all right? If you're releasing videos Tuesday and Friday, you can build up these playlists as you do it. But that's how I want you to focus on playlists. Because I'm telling you guys, the secret to success on YouTube right now is playlists. If you can get people into your playlist, you're getting them to watch more than one video. You're getting them to watch longer on YouTube and YouTube sees, hey, this channel is getting more views and more watch time. Let's promote more of their content on the browse feature or in suggested videos. That is right now where the riches are in growing your YouTube channel is promoting proving to YouTube that you can get people to watch more and more content on YouTube. Okay. So John, that's where I would focus on with some of your thumbnails. I would maybe have a clearer, clearer text. Like this is a lot of text and you need to have the value proposed title. So in the title you need to say you know what they're going to learn from this. And then this thumbnail should just really highlight that imagery. You want to keep text minimal here on YouTube. Again, this is getting kind of hard to read right here. My top five tips when presenting artwork that can be highlighted here in the title. They don't need that here on the thumbnail. And plus, remember this little time ticker gets added here and so you can't even see that. And I 100% don't think that we're going to be able to see this on mobile device as well. So just be careful about that. With this particular thumbnail. This red tends to blend in with this orange. So just be really conscious of your thumbnail. Your thumbnail and your title are what's going to get people to click through and watch your videos. Okay. So you got to really spend time on this thumbnail. And I suggest knowing what your title is going to be before you even shoot your content. I walk through that entire process in my YouTube workflow, how to think about your title before you even craft your content. And so that's what you need to do here as well. That's when you'll start to see it. And you can check in the YouTube Studio beta. So if you go here to the studio beta, you can go in and actually see your click through rates for your thumbnails and your title. So you can actually see how well these titles and thumbnails are causing people to click. All right, I hope that was helpful. I'm going to open up to some Q and A now because I love talking to you guys. Let's see if I what I've missed. I'm having a hard time with thumbnails. What app do you suggest? And any advice on my thumbnail would be appreciative. All right, Carmelita, I suggest having clear imagery. I suggest having your face on that thumbnail as well, making it stand out in some way and branding it to your channel so that people know that thumbnail is part of your channel. Because if people start to follow you and they don't necessarily subscribe to you, you want their thumbnails to stand out. Any way you can show or tease the Value or story of your video in that thumbnail is helpful. What I do is I will shoot my videos and then take separate photos for my thumbnails. It takes me way too much time to find a still shot in my video to take a thumbnail photo. And, and it's never as great a quality. So I will shoot my video and then I will take, I will just turn like my camera, I have it down there and turn it on self timer and take a couple shots of myself. And then right now what I'm doing is just having like a really tinted pink overlay so that it stands out as my branding. Okay. So that's how I would start with thumbnails. Really think about how to show the value of your video or, or tease the story. Okay. I use PicMonkey, I use Canva, I have a designer who uses Illustrator, and I've also used Pixel or Pixlr. It's a Mac app, so I've used those ones as well. Carmen says how should I best use the Community tab? So the Community tab has now been open to almost everybody. I have actually not gotten started with it. I would say the best way is to start engaging. I think there's polls there letting people see behind the scenes. I am on Instagram and I love Instagram stories, so I might try to test it that way. But I haven't really started to dug into the Community tab a lot. But yeah, I think maybe doing polls, asking people what videos they want to see from you, maybe sharing a behind the scenes that you're making this video. I think that's a great way to start using the community tab. Thank you, Ray. Great tips, Trina. This information is priceless. Awesome. Carmen says she uses PicMonkey. John. That's one of the things I struggle with most, is keeping the focus on one thing. Yeah. And that is most people's problem. Like, I understand we have passions in everything, right. I have a passion to helping simplify mom life and getting organized. And so that's why I started another YouTube channel. And I haven't necessarily been focusing on that a lot. I just started to get back to it. But if I were to post that mom type content on my business tip you guys, on my business channel here, you guys would be like, wait, Trina, like I came here to learn more about YouTube. Why are you telling me about this planner? Or why are you telling me about how to get your pantry organized? Like you just wouldn't connect with it, Right? So that's why it's really important to focus on that one particular niche and go all in with was a loading. Okay, great. I'm so glad you found this helpful, John. Taryn, I hope you found this helpful as well. Love the Netflix binge watching reference. Makes so much sense. Explain that way. Yeah, I mean that's really how I'm trying to create my content. I just shot some content today and I'm thinking about, okay, what's the playlist? How am I going to feed people from one video to the next? What are the six videos that make sense to go back to back and how am I going to get them in there? By the playlist title telling you that's the key to success on YouTube. Do you have a video that has tips for what I should do for my channel? Whatever you're passionate in picking a topic that you love is going to show in your videos. If you don't love what you're talking about, nobody's going to love hearing you talk about it. So I would find something you're passionate about. Whether it's, you know, sharing beauty tips or planning tips or organization. Anything that you really love is a great idea. John says, do you think it's worth opening a new YouTube channel that focuses on just one thing? Not necessarily. You could start with the channel that you have now. I mean, you have 200 subscribers, so I mean, it's not detrimental. You could open a new YouTube channel and go hardcore with say art and art education and really focus that branding and focus on one channel and maybe use this other channel as a lot of YouTubers have like a vlog channel. So they have their main niche channel, then they have a vlog channel. Maybe that channel we looked at today for you is just kind of your creative outlet channel. And what takes off, takes off. And you really want to focus on growing a profitable YouTube channel then opening a new one, focusing on one topic. What are your tips for avoiding perfectionism? Just got to do it. Like you just got to rip the band aid off. Do it. Get that video up. I can tell you I've been doing YouTube for three years and my lighting still not perfect. I still shoot video with lipstick on my teeth. I might have lipstick on my teeth now. I don't have my camera set up right because you can see the floor right now. There are always things that you think you're going to need to perfect, but nobody is ever going to point it out until you tell them. You probably didn't notice my floor until I told you. Again, the only way you're going to keep getting Better is if you just keep doing. The reason why you connect with people is because of your personality. People don't want to watch a perfect robot. They don't want to watch somebody who has this perfect, like, studio background and everything seems perfect on them. You want to relate to somebody that could be like your best friend you're meeting for coffee. Right. You want to watch those videos because you feel connected with them on a deeper level. And that's the audience that's going to be your loyal followers and come back and watch more content. So that's one of the best tips that I have for just getting over perfectionism. Because your audience and your true followers aren't going to care how perfect you are. Organized to save spaces. She wants to really focus on creating playlists in 2019. Perfect. That's definitely how you're going to grow our channel. No, you're good for lipstick. Thanks. Yeah, I've shot videos before with lipstick on, and I was like, you know what? I still put it up because I'm not perfect either. Courtney, again, for your channel, you've just got to pick something, you know and that you're passionate about. I don't know what you're passionate about. And so I can't tell you what to create a video on. I did post a video a couple weeks ago about 15 YouTube channel ideas. You could go watch that to get an idea, but I don't know what channel to tell you to create because I don't know what you're passionate about. And that's really where you want to start a YouTube channel. All right, friends, I am going to wrap this up now. I am going to be on TubeBuddy at 3pm Eastern Standard Time. John. I use. I've used Imovie for a long time and I now use Final Cut as my editor. I am going to be on TubeBuddy at 3pm So I gotta get ready for that. We're doing a Test run at 2, so if you want to learn what goals you should be setting, and also if you want to grab my YouTube workflow so I have a trello board that walks you through exactly my entire process. To think about playlists and to think about titles and to think about all of these things in sequential order. So you can actually check things off of a box to make sure you did it. You can go to my name, Trina little.com youtubeworkflow, all lowercase. And you can actually buy my workflow. It's under a hundred dollars. You can grab it. You can start really setting up your playlist strategies and knowing exactly what you need to do as you work through the process. So I still have that available right now if you want to grab that again. Treanalittle.com YouTubeWorkflow Also, make sure you're subscribed to this channel and jump into my Facebook group. I have a link in the description box because I've got something coming out for all of you guys in the new year. All right, A lot of you really want to focus on growing a YouTube channel. You need the accountability. You need the feedback. Well, January 2019 I have been working. That's why I've been quiet here on these live streams. I've been spending my time focusing on the next big thing over here at Trina Little, so I can't wait to share that with you. If you want to be the first to know again, subscribe to this channel or head on over to my Facebook group video for Biz Crew because they're going to get first access to this. So I can't wait. I might be doing a live I'll be going live again here next week. So organized to save. I'm going live next week, next Wednesday at 1pm Eastern Standard Time as well to do another channel review session before the end of the year. So thank you all so much for spending this half hour with me. I know you have busy lives and you got other things on, so I am so appreciative that you came and took the time to watch this. Thank you so much and I hope I will see all of you again next Wednesday. Bye.