Make CONSISTENT money with YouTube videos as soon as you get started

As a business owner who is working with business owners every single day in my YouTube production agency, I tend to see them jump into YouTube doing two things wrong. I also see this with my members inside of Video Strategy Academy. So anybody who is jumping into YouTube, they hear that this is what works on YouTube, but it's stuff that has worked on YouTube two to three years ago and doesn't really work that way anymore. That first thing is SEO. They think, okay, I'm going to SEO the crap out of this. I'm going to research all the perfect keywords and my videos are going to be golden. Or they think in every single video they can promote their lead magnet, their opt in, their webinar, get people to their website and they're not trying to get people to watch more YouTube videos. So when it comes to using YouTube for your business, there's a bit more that you've got to do. And you really got to make sure what you are doing is what's working on YouTube right now in 2022. So if you're ready to make sure the time you put into creating YouTube videos actually pays off, as in you're reaching new people, more people, and those people are buying from you. So you see your bank account increase increasing, you gotta watch this entire video. Because I've never done a deep dive like this before. Specifically for business owners wanting to use YouTube to drive more traffic to their business. Hey there, welcome back. If you are brand new, my name is Trina and this channel is all about helping you create content that converts specifically. I really focus in on YouTube, but it could be any kind of content that you're creating in your business. I really want to make sure that content puts money in your bank. And like I said, With YouTube, you've got to be following some key YouTube rules. The first thing I want to talk about is setting up your YouTube channel to look professional. Because it doesn't matter if you have videos on your YouTube channel, you don't have videos on your YouTube channel, or your YouTube channel is a little dusty, maybe you posted a couple videos and left it there. If by chance, anybody who maybe would want to buy from you, work with you, comes upon your YouTube channel, you've really got to make sure it looks good, right? First impressions are lasting impressions. So the first thing that you are going to want to make sure looks Great on your YouTube channel is your channel banner. Some key parts to your channel banner that you should incorporate is definitely your name or your business name. Have a photo of yourself there as well. Because you need to make that personal connection with them. People are going to pick you over anybody else who is doing what you're doing based on you and your personality. Feature yourself on that channel banner and also feature what the value is for that viewer if they come to your channel. So for me, on my channel banner it says create content that converts. So if somebody stumbles upon my YouTube channel, they know, oh, this channel is going to help me create content that's going to make me money, right? So you don't want to put a lot of words here because it can get kind of cramped and you got to think about formatting it for mobile devices and laptops and iPads and tablets and the television. And so just keep it really simple, like three to five words here on your channel banner. And then you also want to include if you are uploading weekly or what day you are uploading. If you haven't committed to a day yet, make sure you just say new videos every single week. That will give them a reason to want to hit that subscribe button if they know that you are going to be creating new content for them every single week. The next part on your channel homepage is your about section. And you want to be focusing on this about section as a way basically to pitch yourself to a possible viewer or subscriber. Especially those first two to three sentences because they can show up on a variety of places on YouTube. If they hover over your channel icon, those first couple of sentences can show up. So what should you say here? Well, like I said, you want to give them a reason to check out your YouTube channel. So really highlight the value you're giving people to your YouTube channel. So it gets them over there looking at your channel banner and then the next thing thing is looking at your YouTube homepage. I see a lot of people break down their homepage into categories and that's not how you want to look at your YouTube homepage as you start developing videos and creating series of videos. Remember, we want to create episodic content for our YouTube channel. You want to put playlists on your homepage with titles that really pitch a value. You want to think about your playlists and your channel sections. Just like the title of a video, what is going to cause people to want to click on it and spark that curiosity, right? So don't just think you're going to put categories here like email, market, marketing, blog, writing, social media. There's got to be more purpose, more value pitching in those titles on your channel section. Plus it really gives people an idea of what kind of content they can expect from your channel. A huge time saver that you can also do, I guess with setting up your YouTube channel. But more about description boxes. So every time you upload your YouTube video, you want to be filling out that description box. But there are ways you can streamline that process every single video that you upload. You're going to write a paragraph to 2 summarizing what your video is about. But everything underneath of there, like your lead magnet opt in your social media links, your work with me page, that can all be defaulted so that every single time you upload your YouTube video that's already plugged in there and all you have to do is create that summary, that one to two paragraph summary. So now you know how your YouTube channel should be set up to look more professional and hopefully start driving some more leads over to your business. Let's talk about those leads and those viewers. The second thing you need to do as a business owner is clearly understand your target audience. And I am taking a different approach to YouTube in 2022 then I've done in the past. And as I case study this and test it out, I will keep you updated to make sure you're subscribed because I'm always sharing my results of tests that I'm doing here. But I honestly believe when it comes to niching on a topic, there may be a better approach to niching around a target audience. So for so long we've heard, you know, experts say niche on a topic like if you're going to do mountain biking, just do mountain biking content. If you're going to do Instagram, just do Instagram content. Right? Because the, the, the more you create content around the same topic, the more YouTube is going to know who to surface you to. But what I found, it kind of boxes us in and it gets stale with our audience like the subscribers that we drive and what I am doing more with our clients, what I'm teaching my members of Video Strategy Academy and what I'm doing with my own content is making my niche around my target audience. I know my target audience is entrepreneurs, business owners. I know that they are struggling to get to the point where they can hire somebody to help them. They're just below possibly that six figure income. I know that's one set of my audience. There's another set of my audience specifically for my agency where they're making half a million or more in their business. But mostly my YouTube channel is for those of you that are just trying to get that consistent income. Now that means I'm not just creating content around YouTube. How tos right. I've got a lot of feedback from you all. I've done polls here on my YouTube channel, I've done questionnaires to my email list. And you get tired about me posting about the same thing over and over. So what I'm doing is clearly understanding my target audience and creating content for you. So how can you implement this? How can you start implementing this for your channel? Well, the first thing that I would do is think about who is your audience watching on YouTube with topics that you can talk about. So for example myself I started looking at more of Vanessa Lau, Sunny Lenarduzzi, also Aaron on demand, the types of content that they are talking about, not necessarily the YouTube experts. Sunny used to talk a lot about YouTube and you can see now she's talking more about branding and business and mindset. And so being able to wr broaden my content but still thinking about the specific person that I'm creating content for is allowing me to reach more people because my people may not realize that YouTube is doable or that YouTube is the solution yet. And those of you that are subscribed to me are getting tired about me talking about how to get a thousand YouTube subscribers. Right? You want to hear more about the business stuff and next level YouTube stuff. So start looking at these channels that you believe your audience is watching and then go to those channels and look at the topics that are performing well. What are getting the most views? Look at recent content, Are there any videos that are really standing out when it comes to views. And then if you like some of that content, even though it doesn't fall under your niche, go for it, see how it performs. And if you have a YouTube channel, you've got some of this data already. You can dive in and look at the keywords that they are searching to find your content. YouTube has a new feature in analytics. If you have enough data, it's literally going to show you what other channels your audience is watching. I love this feature. And again, you have to have enough views on your channel for YouTube to figure this out. But that is so golden. That has been a huge, huge change for me and how I'm planning and strategizing my content and my clients content. The next thing that you're going to do, we talked about making your channel look professional, we talked about knowing your audience and now moving into market research. Look, I would spend more of my time doing this market research than I would doing keyword research. Market research is going to pay off threefold, as opposed to keyword research. What kind of market research should you be doing? Well, let me show you how I would do this for two different channel niches over on my computer. Side note, you're gonna see me change my outfit in just a second. That is because the first part of this video, I lost the footage too. So I had to reshoot this on a separate day. So now you're gonna go see the rest of the content with me and another outfit. The first thing that I would do is think about anybody that, you know your audience is currently watching. So let's say you're a virtual assistant. Go ahead and Type it into YouTube Virtual Assistant. I have a plugin right now called Vidiq that allows me to see subscribers for the channel. So look at anybody has some traction on YouTube. I'd say anywhere between 10,000 subscribers to maybe like 70,000 subscribers, let's say for a virtual assistant. Teaching other virtual assistants. Remember, it's really important to understand your target audience. If you're a virtual assistant looking for a business owner to work for, that's going to be different. But let's say you are a virtual assistant helping other virtual assistants get better or get clients or teaching somebody to become a virtual assistant. We can see right here, Lauren Gold has a video with 146,000 views and 30,000 subscribers. So we're gonna go to her channel and what I'm looking at, it says, free Mama tv, new episodes every Tuesday. I want to just see is this who my audience is watching? Productivity habits that'll change your business, manage work, life, balance. And you need to be the decision maker here. I can't tell you if your audience is watching this. Not. This is why it's really important that you understand your audience. And so let's say my audience is watching this person. What I'm going to do is sort by most popular and I'm going to see what kind of content is her most popular content. You can see these are popular because they have more views and the channel has subscribers. 30,000 subscribers. 146,000 views. 57,000 views. So what can a virtual assistant do? How to identify your skills. Email management, Virtual assistant. Those are topics that other virtual assistants are wanting to know. Then you're going to go to this video and you're going to come down into the comments and you really want to dive in here and see what questions are being asked. Because if this is your target audience, this is your audience right here in these comments. And these are the actual questions that they have. So you're going to dive in here. You're going to take time looking at what people are saying. What are they asking for, what are they not sure about? This is your gold mine. Now you could also go up here to virtual assistant, hit enter, and then you could sort all of this by channel to see if there are any channels specifically for virtual assistants. So again, we're going to hit channel. We see Abby Ashley. So I know for a fact Abby Ashley targets virtual assistants work at home. Moms, military wives. Right. So we could go to Abby Ashley as another one of our market research channels. And we're gonna go to again, videos. What you can do is see are any videos recently performing well? Meaning we want to get a gist of what her average views are per video. So you can see 428, 1,764. We're just getting an average number. Nothing super scientific, nothing is really standing out recently in the last four months as a major topic. Maybe this 1.9 thousand views. Right. Software for virtual assistants. So since this is more recent, this is another way to do some market research. What are recent topics that they are talking about that's performing well with their audience? Again, you would go to this video, look at the comments, look at what people are saying. And you could also sort by most popular. And you can see when you do it this way, there are usually older topics that are here. So they're not as recent, but they could still work. So again we see create a professional Gmail signature, Create a brand board. Very important. Let's do one more example of market research. Let's say productivity. Maybe you're a productivity coach and you can see what people are actually searching for here on YouTube. So this is going to give you an idea. Let's just say productivity tips. And then you want to look at are any of these channels what your target audience would be watching? If you are a female and you are targeting other females, this channel is probably not going to be targeting your audience or this one. Right. I would assume as a female wanting to learn more about productivity, I'm probably not going to click on a channel hosted by a male because I just feel like I have different issues than what I would with a man. So I would look at maybe we go to lavendaire, maybe we go to Luis, maybe we go to Julia. These are all very large channels. So keeping that in mind as well, let's just look at Jules here and see if her channel is targeting productivity. So intentional videos, self care systems, habits, routines. So if I know that my audience is into self care and habits and routines, mindfulness, right. This may be a channel that is talking to my target audience. What you're going to do is you're going to come to videos you're going to look at. Are there any specific topics that have blown up in the last couple of months? And this is a great example because you can see on average she's ranging from 5 to 8, sometimes 8 to 11,000 views per video. But what we see right here, reset your home for 2022 right now listen, if you're talking to business owners and how to be productive in their business, this is not a channel for you to be looking at because this looks more like targeting at home. Reset your mind, reset your home, reset your digital space. Self care habits. If your audience is this great, but you need to understand who your audience is. This is why it's so important. So that was a big one. And then also I saw a hundred thousand, one full home tour, cozy, minimalist style. Okay, that blew up. And again you can go sort by most popular topics. Remember you're going into these videos and you're looking at the comments. So how I organize my calendar. Great topic. It's recent. Here's another recent one Notion tour. Those are the types of topics that you want to start creating on your channel to kind of be linked, linked up with this channel and get some of their viewers on over to your content. Now let's jump into the sixth thing that you should do. And it's SEO. Ish. I know I talked a little bit earlier about not spending so much of your time on keyword research, but I want to dabble right here on what SEO and keyword research you should actually do. Because what is important to understand as you're Getting started on YouTube in 2022, ranking on YouTube doesn't work the way it used to do. Things have totally changed on YouTube in the past three years. And if it was three years ago, 100% you could rank on YouTube. But to understand why it's not so much ranking on YouTube anymore is because YouTube has taken the time to really understand viewers behavior on the platform. We all know every platform, whether it be Instagram, YouTube, Facebook wants people to stay longer on their platform because they make more money for the ads that they show. And so when YouTube realized there are actually other metrics that they should be rewarding, so to speak, for channels and videos, that's when ranking kind of lost its cloud out and kind of lost its power. And so again, other things that you should be looking at when you have content on YouTube, we'll dive into like click through rate and audience retention and end screen clicks. But for here, before you have YouTube content up or as you're just getting started, you want to ensure you're creating the content that your audience is actually looking for. Don't stress over the SEO stuff right now. Just create videos that your audience is asking you a lot about. What are emails that you're getting often? What are Instagram dms or comments that you're getting often? Work on creating those videos. Turn those questions into individual videos first. Again, don't dive in to figuring out what is the best keyword to rank for. You need to make sure you're helping your audience first and foremost. Because your whole point in creating this YouTube channel is to get people on your email list is to get people to want to work with you, to buy from you. And if you aren't answering their questions, why would they want to work with you or buy from you? Now, if you don't have an audience yet on like Instagram or an email, remember that market research that we did? Go back to those channels that are talking to your audience and see what are they asking in the questions, or find channels that maybe are doing similar content to you and go into the comments of those videos and again, look at what people are asking. What are some common threads that are coming up? That's how I would get started. That's where I would create my first eight to 10 videos would be all around those common questions, turning those into videos instead of spending the time on SEO research. All right, moving on to the sixth step that you've got to do, and that is optimize your videos once you do create them. A little piece of advice right here. The first video is going to suck, and that's going to be the hardest step for you, is to get that first video up and don't let it, you know, hold you back. Just put it up there, rip it off like a band aid and get going. But when you are uploading these videos, whether you have no subscribers or you're just getting started, you want to make sure you do some key steps. This is also going to work for you. If you're like, hey, I've been on YouTube for a while and I'm not seeing results, I would go in and analyze these things first. How often are you keeping people on the platform on your video? So this is for new people, veterans. You Want to make sure, like at least every other video, if not every two to three videos, you're telling people to watch another video. Remember we talked about how it's important to keep people on the platform if you're constantly giving a call to action to lead YouTube and you're ending that person's potential session on YouTube. That's a metric that YouTube is looking at. Remember we talked about the metrics they're looking at? And if you can't keep people on the platform, your video is probably going to get lost in the YouTube black hole. So keep your calls to action very minimal. Have one primary call to action and then maybe a secondary call to action. Main call to action is going to be to watch another YouTube video and then you're going to drop in a couple of those videos that you want to send them to your lead magnet. Now, you can leave your lead magnet link or your webinar link in the the description box of your videos, but having a verbal call to action to leave the platform is just a no, no for YouTube. You also, to properly optimize your YouTube videos, need to make sure your title and your thumbnail are doing their job. You do not want to be creating your title and thumbnail as you're uploading your YouTube video. We do this with all of our clients and our agency. I do this with all of my YouTube videos. I teach all of my members inside a video strategy academy. You've got to know what the title of your video is going to be and your thumbnail concept and is before you craft any kind of content. Because the title and the thumbnail is going to be the primary marketing material for that video. And if that title isn't getting people interested and getting people to click, it doesn't matter how great your content is. But you also want to make sure you have that title first because you're pitching something awesome and then you deliver in that content. Right? So if you're going to pitch them something amazing that they're going to learn in this video if they click on it, you better as heck make sure you deliver on that promise on that thumbnail. And so take a look at your title and your thumbnail. Do they spark curiosity? Do they promise a value? Look at market research? Again, what are other people doing? How are they creating their thumbnails? How does yours stack up to them? Right, because that's going to tell you how good your titles and thumbnails actually are. You also want to make sure your description box is filled out. We talked a little bit earlier in this video about those uploads, but every single video that you upload, you should be writing a paragraph to 2 paragraph summary about the video. Again, I know we talked a little bit about SEO again and this can assist in YouTube and Google understanding what your video is. But the key point here is especially the first line of your description box shows up in search shows up in other places on YouTube as well. So you don't just want to repeat the title or say something, hey guys, how are you today? That extra line in your description box gives you another place to pitch why that person should watch your video. So make sure you're filling out that description box. I do want to talk about tags here as well. They're there. They're not given too much clout on how you're going to perform. So add them, but just add words and phrases that you feel adequately describe what your video is about. So there's no key strategy for picking the best tags. Just put words and phrases in your tag that describe what the video is about. No overthinking here. End Screens so at the end of your video, remember we have a call to action to watch another video. You need to be pitching that next video. And those end screens only show up on those last 20 seconds. And so you need to ensure that you still have people's attention to those last 20 seconds of your video when that video is shown to them. And again, when you're crafting your game plan for YouTube for this video, you need to know what you're going to pitch. Because instead of of just saying watch this video next because it's awesome, if you know what video you're sending them to and it makes sense for them to watch that video next, they're going to be more likely to click on it, which is going to tell YouTube, let's recommend that video to more people because if they watch it, they watch another video. Thinking about these metrics that honestly matter over on YouTube right now in 2022. So don't forget those end screens captions. Captions are another thing that you should be adding. I personally like to use Rev.com I'll link to it down below. It's an affiliate link. Every single time my video goes live, I go over to Rev and order captions. We can then use these captions on Facebook. If I want to upload the video to Facebook, we can use these captions to start writing a blog post. But captions keep your audience watching. Listen. Some people love listening. Some people love reading. You also have to think of the hard of hearing community as well. But sometimes people want to hear and read at the same time because they retain it better. So make sure you're adding captions to your video. And the last thing that I'm going to add here is comments. You want to ask for comments in your video. Not just say comment down below or leave me a comment. You've got to give them a reason to comment down below. Alright, so whether you're asking in your video and you know to engage with you with a specific question or you leave a comment in the comments asking a question and respond back to them, did you know that every time you comment back to somebody that's actually counted as a comment on your video, even though it's your comment. So you could really have some great conversations in the comment section of your video. In your video. Looks like there's a lot of great engagement happening. Alright, so you know how to set your videos up for success on YouTube and when I mean success, that you've set videos up, that your audience, your brand new audience is going to find it on YouTube and they're going to watch it and YouTube is going to recommend your content out to more people. But how do you take that viewer you watching right now on over to your lead magnet? Quick question before we go over to my computer where I show you how I have my lead magnet process set up. Do you have a lead magnet right now? Like a checklist, a workbook, a webinar, something free that you give people to get them on your email list? Do you have something, what is it? Go ahead, link it down below. I'd love to see what you all are creating. How my funnel looks is I use a tool called FG Funnels. Everything is created on here. You can also do payments through here. It's basically your all in one. But I want to show you what happens when somebody gets my, let's say this YouTube checklist, which is one of my opt ins, my lead message magnets. So you'll see right here if we pop this up, this is the landing page. This really talks why they should get it, what's in it for them if you get it. You put your email in here, you hit get your checklist and then your email is sent to ConvertKit which is an email provider that I have. It's right here, ConvertKit. Once they put their email in that box, they're then taken to this thank you page. Look, thank you. Your checklist is being sent to your email but I have on the back End of this, what's called a tripwire or a self liquidating offer, an slo of a smaller product of mine. The hardest dollar to get somebody to spend on you is that first dollar. And so for somebody that's jumping into my funnel who's like said yes to a free lead magnet, they may also say yes to a small offer and that's going to prime them for maybe working with me, maybe buying a higher ticket product of mine. So once they get that lead magnet, this is the thank you page and you can see right on down here tells them all about my prep system. It shows exactly what's included, how you're going to learn. It's basically a sales page right with that thank you up top and then they can click here and buy my prep system. So they don't have to buy my prep system to get the checklist. But they're a hot lead, they're a warm lead. They're going to be at a higher opportunity to convert than anybody else. So I offered on the back end of signing up because it's not going to hurt anything. Once they are signed up then they, there are emails that go out to keep this person warm and let them get to know me a little bit. So again let's go back to ConvertKit. I have a funnel on the back end. This is what a funnel looks like. So if anybody gets my script template, my must have tools, any of these freebies, they are then put into a welcome sequence. And our welcome sequence currently is five emails. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So what happens is once they put their email list in and they go to that thank you page, they're automatically, automatically sent that lead magnet, that freebie in email. Then a few hours later, you see, three hours later I'm going to remind them of their Download, that their YouTube handbook is here, their YouTube checklist is here and give them a little more information about me and what they can expect from me in the next couple of days. Then a day later I send another email and I send one email a day for five days. Again this is just getting that person to know about me, what value I can bring to them, giving them value and just really introducing them to me so we can create that relationship and they'll see the value in wanting to work with me or wanting to buy with me. Now after they are done with this particular sequence you'll see we go back here and then it's the end of the Optima Opt automation. So then the tag is removed and then they start getting Sent my weekly emails from there on. When you take a YouTube video and you announce this freebie, this lead magnet, this opt in, you then get them on your email list. You can get them the purchase, purchase a small product on that thank you page and they start to get to know more about you. In this welcome sequence, you could also sell to them. You could tell them about a webinar to sign up for. You could tell them about your free offers. If you go into this email sequence, you can tell them as one of my VIPs I want you to know you can work with me one on one. Here's how. Or are you ready to work with me more? Here are the different ways to do it. I think I have that right here. I break down 60 minute strategy session, my prep system and my agency so that they clearly understand what it is I have to offer and it's going to convert that possible free lead because maybe they didn't buy my prep system on that thank you page, but they may now after they got more information about me. Right? And so it's taking that free lead like I said, and converting it into cold hard cash in your business. So now that you see the process that I have set up, when should you be promoting this lead magnet or this opt in? So if you watch this video right here, I talk about my fireworks strategy. I talk about I have one, one core video. And in that core video, that's when I send people off of the platform. Then I have all these spark videos that talk about this topic and then tell people in this video to go watch that core video so that then hear about that lead magnet. So watch that video, it goes into more detail. That's when you should promote it. I would say once every three to four videos if you really want YouTube to start recommending your content to more people. So what are some lead magnet ideas that you can too? Well, some ideas could be like templates. I know a lot of people do like free Canva templates, free asana templates, Trello templates. Is there a workbook that could help somebody you know, take a step in your niche? Is there profile ideas like Instagram profile ideas, swipe, copy anything that your audience is going to find really valuable. It doesn't have to be an entire course. It could be a mini course if you wanted it to, but something that that person, your target audience will see and say, hi. Huh, that sounds interesting. I want it right. All right, let's talk about the next step. And understand once you've done this all it is going to take time to see results on YouTube. This isn't a get rich quick scheme. YouTube is a long sustainable strategy that you can put in place where you have videos working for you for months, years to come. And that doesn't come easy. So don't expect to slap up five videos and instantly see where result. It's going to take time, but once you have those videos up, then you need to make sure you're doing this final set and it is review, analyze and repeat. If you are skipping this step, you're never going to know what you're doing that's working, what's not, and you're not going to know what to double down on to see quicker results. So I have a lot of videos here on my channel about analyzing your YouTube content. But you really need to understand are your thumbnails getting clicked? Are your people watching your videos, looking at your audience retention? Are you getting people to watch another video? Because that's what YouTube is really valuing and that's when YouTube is going to do the promoting for you for free and put your videos in front of more people. Now if you want to make sure that you have your videos structured for success so that people are clicking on it, people are watching it, and you're either getting them to your lead magnet or watch another video. I'm hosting a five day challenge starting Monday, February 7th. The YouTube game plan challenge is five days of training, five days of work and five days of activity. Access to me with live training as well. So not only pre recorded training, but live training every single day too. I'm going to show you exactly how to create a sustainable YouTube plan so that all the work you put into these videos pay off with more leads, more clients and more sales to your business. Go to trina little.com forward/challenge to sign up now because we are getting started first thing Monday, February 7th.