MAJOR YouTube Q&A! All your questions about YouTube answered!

I get asked so many amazing questions by all of you on a daily basis. It can be super hard to keep up with all the questions. So I figured today I'm just going to bring all of those questions into one video and do a big Q and a all about YouTube. So all of your YouTube questions are going to be answered here today. We're also rocking a horizontal striped shirt, so let's just hope this doesn't turn out too terrible. Welcome back. If you are new here, my name is Trina and on this channel, I'm all about giving you the confidence to show up on video. We're going to jump right into the questions here and one of them, most common ones I get is how do you stay consistent on YouTube when you're running a business and being a mom, how do you do it all? So the most important thing is to put things on a calendar. For me, I have to schedule in when I'm going to film my YouTube videos and when I'm going to research my YouTube videos. And I set boundaries. So I know that before coronavirus, I was only working Monday through Thursdays from about 7am till 4pm and those were my boundaries. I had to get done in that time what I needed to get done. If I couldn't fit it in, was it worth doing it? Is it something I really needed to do? So that's how how I started really finding the time to do everything and then to stay consistent on YouTube, it's just making sure you have that routine in place. I knew at that time. Again, my schedule is a little bit differently. So right Now I'm filming YouTube videos every other Saturday so that I can continue to stay consistent and show up here for you on YouTube. Prior to coronavirus, when kids were out of the house, I would shoot every first Thursday of the month on my video content. You just have to put it on the calendar instead. There's no secret way around it. You just have to commit and do it, whether it's good, bad. In fact, this morning I wasn't feeling 100%. I had a bit of a headache. But this is the time that I put down for filming videos. So I turned on some music, I did some dancing and was ready to show up here for you. Thinking about the content that you want to see, maybe you want to get here on video. This is another big question I get asked almost daily, Trina, where do I start? Like, how do I get started with YouTube? So I suggest just creating a video. When you're getting started on YouTube, you're going to be learning a lot of things in that first video you put up. Doesn't need to be perfect. It's probably going to be nowhere near perfect. In fact, if you watch my very first one, it is super cringy, but I will link it here so you can check it out. But you just have to start doing it. You just have to start flexing that muscle. Other things to think about. You could create your channel banner for your homepage. You could start to think about content. You could ask or survey your audience about types of content that they want to create. But just start creating that first video. What is a common question that you get asked all the time? What's a popular blog post that you have on your blog or your website? Start with those ideas, Those ideas that you know your current audience already is asking for you. And just film. You don't need any fancy equipment. You can get started with your cell phone. I have a window over here. So just propping it up on your window and just start there. Once you do get videos on YouTube, that's when you can start maneuvering your strategy. You can start to see what types of videos do well for you, what types of content's doing well for you. You might even see that you, you don't need fancy equipment because just recording on your phone, you've got awesome audience engagement and retention. So just get started. You've got to put something out there to get the numbers back to see how to start maneuvering your strategy. So just film a video. Don't be worried about it. I know it's scary. Just getting that first video is a snowball effect. How do you get your videos seen? I know it can be kind of discouraging when you post a YouTube video and nobody watches it. So I'm going to link to a video right up here that shows you seven ways that I promote my YouTube videos. You really want to get started with the audience that you already have. So whether you have an email list, maybe you have some Instagram followers, maybe you have family and friends, start there. Let them know about your videos, get them to start watching them, maybe sharing them. And once you get those first couple of views again, that helps you get to that next step. Any small win. Remember, YouTube is a marathon. It is not a sprint. Okay? So small steps will get you there. Don't have this high expectation that you're going to post a YouTube video and get thousands of views on it. I still, I still don't get thousands of views on my channel, but I still make over six figures a year because of my YouTube, I'm creating YouTube videos that market my courses and my services. So just start promoting your videos with any platform that you have. And if you don't have any social platforms, that's fine too. Get active here on YouTube. Go to other channels that are talking to your target audience and communicate in the comments. YouTube is just like Instagram and Facebook, right? Create relationships. Engage in the comments section of YouTube videos as well. How long does it take to get traction? Well, that's kind of like looking in a Magic 8 ball. But the best way to get traction is kind of following these steps. Post consistently. So just once a week. Always look at your data and get better. So after your first video, look at your click through rate. Could you create a better thumbnail? Could you create a better title? Look at your audience retention. Did it drop at the beginning? How could you open your video a little bit better and then look at your end screen? Click through rates? How well are you getting people to watch another video? And I go full detail on these specific, specific numbers to look at to see that traction and to get that momentum on your YouTube channel. So I'll link that one up here too and I'll have a full list of videos that I reference that go into more detail. Since I can't really go specifically into detail on these questions, I do have videos that will definitely help you out. Linked below. Oh, here's a good one. If you could share one skill that cut down the time and yet creates the greatest results, what would it be? Basically, what skill is the one you've been able to leverage the most for a successful business? Many of you know I use my YouTube channel as a lead generation into my business. Now my business, I have one on one services. I have a program called Video Strategy Academy. So I use a lot of my YouTube videos to feed people into my business. So I would say the number one skill would be to lead without worrying about failing. I have failed a million times doing this. I launched my first course and had three people buy and I spent all this time into it and it still only got three sales. But I learned from it. Yes, I did take a couple of weeks off and consider if taking this journey the right thing. And I was discouraged and I was sad. But the difference was I decided to pick myself up. I decided to figure out what went wrong, what I could do moving forward. So I think the best skill that I've learned is just being able to fail forward. I know that sounds pretty cliche but just put stuff out there. Except that you might fail. But failing is not a bad thing. The bad thing is if you don't keep moving forward and you let failure stop you. Here's a good one. Is YouTube worth it? I've heard YouTube is saturated. Should I even get started? Absolutely. So lutely. Here's the thing. Video is going to be critical for any business in 2020 and moving forward. It is the biggest way to grow an audience. It is the biggest way to build that know, like and trust with your audience. It is the best place to see your return on investment. Now, while YouTube might seem saturated, not everybody on YouTube in the majority of people on YouTube aren't doing it right. They aren't focusing on the right things. They're just posting videos and posting videos. They're not doing the things that I'm teaching you here on this channel, like looking at your click through rate creat, better titles, creating better thumbnails, creating playlists, looking at your audience retention to make better videos. That's where you can really stand out. Because the majority of people here on YouTube aren't making changes, aren't making an effort to make their content better. And if you do that, that is how you're going to stand out. You still have the chance to stand out here on YouTube. The ship has by no means sailed here on YouTube and you still have the opportunity to really see Success here on YouTube. How do you build up the discipline to make videos on days you just don't feel like it? Well, like I said was a great example. I had a headache. It was a Saturday. I just don't normally feel like working weekends due to coronavirus. My schedule has had to be totally different. And what pushed me to show up is thinking about you, thinking about the content I'm creating to share with you. I know when I put out content that it helps somebody, even if it's just one person on the other end of this, it is helping somebody I'm fortunate enough to see in the comments. It is helping more than one person. And seeing those comments definitely gets me showing up here every single week creating content for you. So I will turn some music on, like I said, do a bit of a dance party and just think about the people that are watching my videos and the lives that I'm helping by creating these videos. That's pretty much what gets me to press record on these videos. All right, I got another question on like what a setup should be. So let's do some vlog style and I'll show you exactly how I'm set up right now. So right now I'm sitting at my desk and you see there's a window over here, so that is giving me lighting here. And then I have my ring light right here pointing towards my desk. So let's come over here. You can see this is what it looks like where I'm shooting, right? If we look through that ring light and I have my laptop right there with my script, I can show you that here in a second. And another thing that I do because this room is very echoey because it has tiled floors. So what I did is I just throw blankets down here on the floors. That's it. You can see we're doing a dual office here because my husband is working from home too. So we are literally both sharing this double desk. And most days that I do get a chance to work with him, we have our computer smacked up against each other. But I'm just using what I can. I just got one ring light. I got these blankets on the floor that you don't even see when I'm recording. And I will grab a picture of my camera here, one second. So you can see. I pulled out my phone to show you. This is the camera I'm using recently. It's the Canon eos and I also have a boom mic attached to it as well. I had been for a long, long time using this Canon G7X as well. And I also use this blue Yeti microphone that I plugged in directly into my computer for the audio because the microphone on this camera just wasn't that great. So I used this external mic. You can also see that right here is pretty much my script. It is a list of questions that I got when I asked for some feedback in a survey I sent out. So I'm just going through there and basically answering all the questions that I got in that feedback form. I also had so many of you reach out to me, ask like, how do you manage it all? It feels like everybody does it better. I'm a mom. I'm trying to juggle growing a business and I totally get it. The thing is you have to be really strategic with your time. You need to focus on the things that are important and the things that aren't. Like I said, YouTube and video is the fastest way to build relationships and to build know like and trust. So that's why I spend all my time here on YouTube. I don't really do anything Twitter wise. I do Instagram stories occasionally, but there's no real Strategy behind my Instagram stories. Right now, I take these YouTube videos and repurpose them on as many platforms as possible to save me time. Because I don't have time to go on Facebook Live Weekly, I don't have time to go on Instagram Weekly. I don't even have time to write captions most of the time on Instagram. But the biggest results that I see are by posting these YouTube videos. And I use these YouTube videos as my primary marketing material to show you my personality, to show you what it's like to learn from me, work with me on these videos, which helps me convert much higher on my business. So it's all about prioritizing. You can't do it all, so you need to pick the things that are going to help you move the needle where you want it to move. If you want me to go into more detail about scheduling and planning and doing an entire video on that, let me know what kind of topics you're looking for me to talk about in the comments. And I can definitely add that to my content strategy. But normally when I post that stuff here on my YouTube channel, a lot of you don't really like it. So let me know if you do want me to do some productivity and scheduling videos in the future. Okay? Tags. So many people. Trina, how do I find the best tags? Like, how do I know which tags to use? Here's the secret. Tags don't matter. In fact, my assistant and I were on YouTube the other day and there was an actual thing on YouTube that says tags can be useful if content in your video is commonly misspelled. So if you're doing a video that commonly has a misspelled word in it, use that misspelled word as a tag. Otherwise, tags play a minimal role in helping viewers find your videos. Because here's the thing. YouTube knows. You can lie about your tags. I could upload a video. I've used the sample before of me singing Justin Bieber's Baby and tag it. How to grow a YouTube channel grow a YouTube channel. Best ways to grow YouTube channel YouTube advice. But that's not what I'm talking about. So when you upload your video and you see it's going through that processing phase, that's actually YouTube scanning your video to hear what you are saying, to know what it is you're actually talking about in your video. The algorithm and the robots on YouTube are that smart. So you don't need to focus on tags and having the right tags in your videos to be picked up by YouTube and recommended or showing up in search. So don't waste your time on tags. Use tags and tag research as a way to think about topics and content ideas, not as a way to strategically position your videos in search results. It's not how tags work on YouTube in circa 2020. I really want to talk about this one because I believe it's really important to talk about. So I had a question. How do you think of YouTube as a business? So YouTube I've mentioned here is kind of my marketing material. I don't really make that much Money posting these YouTube videos. I make around $300 a month on AdSense here on YouTube which doesn't even cover our monthly grocery bills. So use YouTube is I'm creating a relationship with you. I'm showing you what I know. I'm showing you what it's like to work with me, how I teach, and then I'm telling you about any free resources that I have because that leads into either buying my course Video Strategy Academy to my agency where I am your channel producer and I plan out your content and we edit it and we upload it and we do all the stuff on YouTube except for filming it, or you're booking a strategy session with me or a coaching call with me. That is how I think of YouTube as my business. I use my videos here on YouTube to drive new people to me, to get to know me on video, which is the fastest way to do it and then lead you to that next step. If you think of like a funnel, it's really large at the top and it comes down narrow to the bottom. I'm using YouTube as the top of my funnel, getting all these people to watch around like 100,000 views in the past month that I've got. So let's say that even 80,000 new people watching my content coming into my world that may not have ever found me on Instagram or Facebook or Pinterest, they're finding me here on YouTube. They're watching me on video. They're determining if they like me or not. If they don't like me, that's totally fine. I'm not going to be for everybody. You're not going to be for everybody, but you are going to be for somebody. People that find me, they like me. They keep funneling on down till they find out how they can work with me, how they can learn more about me. And then that's when I sell a product like my course or a one on one service. In fact, I will make at least 20 to 30 sales a month on my program. And just one of those sales equals what I make in AdSense in a month. So one sale of my course is around $400. And like I said, Adsense is only $300 a month I'm making. So that's how I really use YouTube as my main business attraction, right? And getting people to know who I am, and then I'm getting them to buy products and services with me. What did the first years look like for you? How did you overcome various obstacles in personal life and professional life? No entrepreneur buzzwords and cliches, just real talk. Okay. If you don't know my story, that first year of my business, my daughter turned one, we sold our house, we started building a house, and I had baby number two. So it was really a whirlwind. Also in that first year of my business, I launched my first course and literally sold three courses. And so I honestly thought, whether this was for me or not, I started applying to places I thought about considering asking for my old job at because I thought, what the heck did I do? I really thought I could do this. I mean, I have an MBA in business. Why can't I figure this out? I did get my first official one on one YouTube client that summer. And she literally. I talk about her all the time. Jessica Rasdell. She is a speaking coach. She's currently my speaking coach. She basically turned my business around just that one on one client. After working with her, I really understood a better way to communicate to my audience. I saw the good that I could do by continuing teaching this. And then in year two, after I had baby number two, I struggled with postpartum depression. It was a struggle for me some days to get out of bed and show up on camera. So I really tried to maximize the time that I felt good to get as much done as possible. What ended up working for me is having some systems that in place. The people who were watching my videos were either being directed to my website to learn more about me, to schedule strategy session with me, to buy my course that I had on my website. So even though I wasn't doing this, my YouTube videos that I had created were getting more people to see me, getting more people to learn about me, getting more people to want to buy things from me even when I wasn't feeling great. But I am not going to lie, it wasn't easy. And it's still not easy to this day. There are days where I have great days and I'm like, this is awesome. I'm so Glad I followed through with this. And then there are days like, what the heck am I doing? Like, why do I put this much stress on myself? Why don't I just get a 9 to 5 job that I can leave and not have to bring home? And even right now with coronavirus, it is a constant roller coaster because I don't know what the economy is going to look like. I know fortunately my family is safe. My husband has a job that, that we're good and he can cover everything. But I wonder, like, am I going to be able to continue to keep my business running? It's something going to happen that I'm not going to be able to keep paying the people that are working for me. And I love the people that I work for me. I love that I'm able to provide a living for other people, that my business helps other people with their family as well. In fact, this past three months with coronavirus and complete changes to our world and our schedule has me stressed. If you notice like the these skin miscolorations here, it's a skin problem called I can never get this right. So it's called granuloma angular. It's actually a skin condition that causes raised reddish or skin color bumps and a rig pigment pattern. So it, it looks like ringworm, but it's not. And I really flare up with this in times of stress. I also deal with anxiety as well. So I want you to know, like, this isn't always a smooth sailing journey. I struggle just as like many of you may be struggling right now. I know I always put on like this happy face here on camera. And for the majority of time, I am happy. I love what I'm doing. I love to be able to work with you and I love to be able to help you. But it's not always this way. And most days I'm not putting makeup on. And there are some days that I may be crying into a pint of Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey because I think, how am I going to move forward? But then the next day can totally be different. So just to be absolutely real with you, this journey is a complete roller coaster. But I love it and I love the friends that I've made. I love to be able to create these YouTube videos as well. Now I've got a full list of videos down below and I just put together a quick playlist of some of my best videos to help you out here on YouTube. So make sure you watch that playlist. It's going to go into more detail about a lot of the topics I talked about here today and give you action items and tutorials on how to focus on tags, how to focus on audience retention in more detail. So make sure you watch that playlist. It's definitely going to help you out. Thank you so much for watching. If you like these more raw Q and A videos, drop me some more questions down below and I will do another Q and A video for you.