Skip THESE YouTube Mistakes When Starting A Channel!

The biggest mistake you can make when getting started on YouTube is not putting time into your thumbnail. Your thumbnail to your video is your primary marketing material. If that thumbnail doesn't grab people's attention, they're not gonna click on it. If nobody's clicking on your videos, nobody's watching and it doesn't matter how good it is. And if nobody is clicking on your videos, YouTube is not going to push it to more people. And yes, it's not just your thumbnail, but it's your title as well that ties into your click through rate. And this is really when you're getting started on YouTube because you need to prove to YouTube that people are going to click on your video if they show it to people. In fact, most successful creators on YouTube spend just as much time creating and developing their thumbnail as they do on the actual video they upload to YouTube. So what can you do to fix this mistake? First of all, yes, you can go back to older videos and update or fix your thumbnails. You can totally do it. It's not going to affect anything. In fact, I would recommend updating your thumbnail or changing your thumbnail before you change your tit. So everything I'm about to share with you next you can do and update old videos. So one thing you need to make sure with every thumbnail is to have yourself in it. It's actually been found. Thumbnails with people on them get higher click through rates. We want to see who we're learning from. So if you can get yourself on that thumbnail, you may actually increase your click through rate. The way I do this, and I'm no photographer, is after I'm done filming my videos, I have a checklist of everything that I have to complete for every single video. And the last of my checklist is to get a thumbnail photo. So I just turn my camera on self timer and take a couple different photos of myself that we can use on a thumbnail. And then I use Lightroom. And there's a specific preset that I use so I get consistency with my thumbnail so they look the same way for each thumbnail. You also want to make sure you're minimizing the amount of text you have on your thumbnail. Keep just about three to five words max. That's all that should be on your thumbnail. You just want to use text on your thumbnail that supplements the imagery and the title. You don't need to repeat the title over on your thumbnail. You just need about three to five words that assist in telling the story of your video through the thumbnail and the title. You also want to be aware of the placement of what you're putting on your thumbnail. There are certain YouTube icons that are on your thumbnail that could be covering up important pieces. So. So make sure you're not putting anything in the corners or on the right hand side. I'll show you example right now. But just be aware of where you're putting your imagery and your text on your thumbnails. I would highly recommend you create your thumbnail and then zoom way out on it. Look at your thumbnail and see how it looks in a smaller form. Right. Because so many of us are watching videos on our phone and when we're scrolling through YouTube, those thumbnails can get pretty small on mobile devices. Not everybody's watching on a computer. So you need to make sure everything is clear on those thumbnails, even if it's small. And then, if possible, I would recommend testing your thumbnails. You can do this manually by leaving a thumbnail up for 24 hours and then switching it out another 24 hours to see which one is getting clicked on. But TubeBuddy actually has an A B tool that you can A B test your thumbnails. We use this sometimes with my thumbnails when we're trying to figure out a new style. We see, okay, are people more likely to click on a style with text or without text? That's just something small that we test or we see. Do people click on a solid background versus a more natural background? Those are things that you can test inside of TubeBuddy's A B testing. You can try out TubeBuddy for free. I'll link below for you to test that out. But it has really been super helpful for us and figuring out the best style of thumbnail for us. Before we jump into mistake number two, I want to shout out simply, Delilah, thank you so much for supporting my channel and commenting on my videos. I appreciate you. If you want to see your channel, shout out on my weekly videos. Leave me a comment below letting me know what you what you like most about my channel and make sure you're subscribed to my channel and you might be on my next video. Mistake number two is not knowing your target audience. And this isn't the Sexy side of YouTube. This is the hard piece of YouTube, but this is the piece that will get you success. Because if you don't have this figured out, it's going to be incredibly hard for YouTube. To figure out who to put your videos in front of. And that's how people grow on YouTube, when they're completely clear on who they're creating content for. Because you can't be something for everybody, or you end up being no 1 for everyone. So while the target audience piece seems vague and hard, you need to know it to create the right content. Let's do an example here. Let's say, for example, I'm chugging through creating content about desserts. I just had some chocolate chip cookies last night. And so let's say I'm creating recipe videos around cookies, quick desserts, that type of content. Then I published a video on my workout routine. Some things are going to happen here. First, your audience that is already subscribed to you for your dessert videos is going to be completely confused at why you're publishing a workout video. Absolutely. Some may be interested, but most of them probably subscribe to you for your cooking videos or your baking videos. So what happens is you're not going to get as many clicks or as many views on that particular video because people aren't expecting that type of content from you, and that's not what they're subscribed to. So this video performs badly. And YouTube's not going to push it out to more people because you can't even get your subscribers to watch. So when that happens, you're starting to confuse the algorithm a little bit. Who is your target audience? Is it these people that watching you for your baking and cooking videos, or is it people that are wanting to learn about workout routines? Probably two different types of audiences. And YouTube's already been pushing your content out to this type of people. And when you do this type of video, the workout video, you're kind of throwing a wrench in their system and you're confusing YouTube. So I'm not saying you have to niche very specifically, but you need to understand who you're speaking to. What is your ideal audience? Let's do another example. My channel. I started creating my channel about growing a YouTube channel. But since specifically for business owners who want to use YouTube to generate leads and sales to their business, they already have a business model and they're not looking to become a YouTuber or famous on YouTube. They want to use YouTube as a lead generator and they aren't focusing on using YouTube AdSense as a piece of their revenue. It's a byproduct of creating YouTube videos, but it's not something they're focused on. So I don't create content here about adsense. Because that's not what the people I work with inside my program video strategy academy and my one on one client works. That's not what they're interested in, that's not what they are searching for. But if you look at Annie Dube's channel, she also talks about growing a YouTube channel, but she's talking specifically to those that want to be a YouTuber, who want to make money on AdSense, who want to get those brand deals and their sponsored videos. And so she's talking about that type of content and not necessarily how to drive leads to your funnel or how to get people to buy your webinar product. Right. So she has this audience and she's creating content specifically for that audience. And I have this audience. Well, they do kind of overlap in some. I have a very specific person that I'm targeting. So YouTube knows to look for people who are maybe searching for sales funnels or Instagram marketing or social media planning. Right. Whereas Annie's audience may be looking for brand deals, sponsored videos, how to get more subscribers. My audience doesn't necessarily care about subscribers. It's important to them, but they want to make sure the people who are watching their videos and get into their funnel. You see how that's two different types of audiences. And that's why it's really important to understand who you are speaking to because that's going to affect what content you're going to create to give YouTube the information on who to put your videos in front of. If YouTube doesn't know who to put your videos in front of, it's not going to put your videos in front of anyone. Mistake number three is overthinking. Overthinking in so many ways. This is where I see so many people waste a lot of precious time that didn't need to be wasted. They worry about things like their background. They're going to wait till their background is perfect. Are they worry about getting the perfect equipment before they start or they worry about how are they going to do that fancy editing? Are they worry about having a funnel set up in their business before getting started? Are they worried about having enough video ideas before they get started? But what you really need to do is stop overthinking and and just get videos on your YouTube channel. Because everything I talk about here on my channel is hard for you to incorporate if you don't have the data. It's hard for you to get a better click through rate if you don't even know what your click through rate is. It's going to be hard for you to increase your audience retention if you don't have videos to see what your audience retention is. The only thing you should be focusing on when you're starting a YouTube channel is creating good quality content. Content that your audience wants and content your audience is going to find valuable. I've said this many times here on my YouTube channel, but for an entire year back in 2017, I shot all my YouTube content in front of this ugly beige yellow wall and I still grew my YouTube channel by 300% because I didn't worry about the background. I worried on creating good content. Content my audience wanted, content my audience watched to the end. That's all that should matter. Mistake number four is not picking your green light videos. Now, I talk about this quite a bit on my channel because it's one of the key systems inside of my program, Video Strategy Academy. I don't have the time to go completely into finding your greenlight videos. If you're interested in learning more about Video Strategy Academy and learning my Greenlight video system, I'll link to that down below. But what is important here is finding an overlap of what people are searching for on YouTube versus what you are interested in talking about. When these overlap, Venn diagram style. When these overlap, that is the content. That is your green light videos. TubeBuddy does this great. You can go into TubeBuddy's Keyword Explorer and make sure there are monthly searches for the topic you want to talk about. If there aren't even monthly searches for that topic, it's not a green light video. If nobody's searching for it, how are they going to find your video? Right. I actually go into full detail on how I use TubeBuddy to find the best video topics for my channel. I will link to that video, I think right up here. And I will link to Tubebuddy as well. If you want to try them out, you'll go to trinalittle.com forward/tv tubebuddy to try 30 free days out. So stop wasting your time focusing on the wrong videos and start creating your greenlight videos. Mistake number five having no video game plan. When you don't plan your videos in advance and you kind of go on a whim here. When you're recording, you're going to waste a lot of time. You're going to waste time filming your videos because you're trying to figure out what to say, how to say it. You're going to waste time editing because you're going to have this raw video footage because you didn't know what to say, and you have to edit that. You're gonna waste time figuring out what type of B roll or what type of clips you needed to get when you were filming. And then you're gonna have to do your hair and makeup all over again and reshoot it. So when you're creating a video game plan, it's similar to a video script. Although myself and quite a few of my clients and students find it hard to necessarily read from a script because it takes us out of our personality and we worry too much about saying exactly what's on the script. But your video game plan is also including things like B roll clips you need to get. Like if I need to get a clip of outside the thumbnail photo you need to get for your video. Any screen tutorials you need to get for your videos. Because if you don't have this planned out in advance, it's probably gonna be hard to get people to watch your entire video. Because these are all elements to creating better videos, to getting people to watch longer, to improving your audience retention. And if you can get people to watch the end of your video and watch your videos longer, that's all YouTube wants. So if you're starting a YouTube channel and you wanna see something snowballing success, you gotta create videos that people watch to the end. By having a video game plan before you turn the camera on. Mistake number six is not having a repurposed plan. Now, a repurposed plan is for two different reasons. For business owners. I love to repurpose my YouTube content. So I have social media content across the board. I take my YouTube video, I turn it into a LinkedIn post, I turn it into a blog post, I turn it into an email newsletter, I turn it into Instagram stories, Instagram tv, Instagram reels, Facebook. And so I'm able to create multiple pieces of content without having to recreate that content. I take this video and I repurpose it so many different ways. It helps you create a promotional plan as well. So if your whole goal is to get people to watch your videos and to subscribe to your channel, you can create promotional clips or teaser clips for all of these different platforms to get people over to YouTube to create that promotional plan, right? So if you're getting started on YouTube and you don't have a repurposed plan for social media, like to get the content out there or promotional plan. So repurposing your content to promote your videos, you want to think about that. Now, one thing that I do for Every single video I create is I do an alternate ending for igtv. I want to share about a third of my video on IGTV to get people intrigued and interested and want to hear the rest of it. And then I give them a call to action to watch the entire video over on YouTube. So go watch the entire video over on my YouTube channel. It's much easier to check it out over there and be able to take notes. And then on Facebook I do an alternate ending as well, but I put the full video over there. I can increase my visibility on Facebook. We can use this video views as warm leads for running ads. And I just do an ending that says continue watching my Facebook videos or like my page. Right. Something specific to Facebook mistake number seven is, you probably guessed it by now, not looking at your analytics. Look, YouTube wants you to succeed if you get more views and more watch time. People are seeing more ads and YouTube's making more money. So YouTube gives you all the data that you need to grow. You just need to be looking at it. Because if, if your videos aren't successful or your YouTube channel is not successful, they're not making money on it either. But I know you're really short on time when it comes to looking at your analytics. So the three things that I highly recommend you take time to look at every single month is the YouTube trifecta. YouTube trifecta for me is your click through rate, your audience retention, and your end screen click through rate. So how well are you getting people to watch one of your videos to the end, clicking on the end screen and watching another video. Some other things that you can look at are the keywords that are driving traffic to your channel. You can also look at the suggested videos that are driving traffic to your channel as well. In fact, I did an entire video on analytics. Again, one of these sides that will be linked to, but it goes into full detail on how I audit and analyze my YouTube channel every single month. So if you're getting started on YouTube, you'll definitely want to check that video out to make sure you're understanding what you're looking at and how to understand what that data is telling you to help you grow your channel. The last mistake that I see all the time for people starting a YouTube channel is not having a strategy. But there is way too much to creating a YouTube strategy that I can cover in this video. So watch the video that's on your screen right now where I walk through everything I did to fix my 2021 YouTube strategy. Because at the beginning of the year, it was not working for me, so I had to course correct. And this will walk you through how you can create a YouTube strategy for yourself. So watch that video next.