Start YouTube From Scratch in 2019 (even with 0 views and 0 subscribers)

Tired of hearing people give you ways of Growing a YouTube channel that just doesn't make sense or it seems like a lot of fluff. Get ready because in this video we are going through an epic step by step how to to start a YouTube channel from scratch and grow it even if you're starting at zero. So grab a pen and paper for some notes and let's get started. Welcome to Tips with Trena where I share with you how to do YouTube better and in this case, how to get started from scratch. But before we jump in, there are some key YouTube foundations that you need to understand first before jumping in. Just like when you build a house, you need a strong foundation. When you start on YouTube, you need to have a strong foundation. And here's what you need to know. Your YouTube views to your videos are going to come from primarily to different traffic sources. When it's coming from YouTube, it's either going to come from search or suggested Search is when you go to YouTube and you type in a topic and that populates the search result. The other traffic source is your suggested video. So while you're watching this video right now, if you look over to the side, you're going to see a list of suggested videos for you to watch. These are the two primary traffic sources that you're going to get from YouTube. Now in regards to these two traffic sources, I know you probably hear all the time rank your videos get found in search, but I'm actually going to give you a little secret to YouTube success. Your secret is really showing up in suggested videos. Suggested videos end up being more valuable to you than search because search is constantly changing. As the YouTube platform becomes more user specific, YouTube is going to put in search what people are already looking for. So YouTube already understands that viewer's behavior and they're going to put videos in there that they think that viewer is going to watch. So even though I may put in YouTube tips, I may be getting a video served up to me in search that's about mural painting tips because the day before I was searching videos about painting and murals. You see what I mean? So by following these steps, I'm going to share with you. It's really going to future proof your channel and your videos to show up in suggested videos because you're going to be more likely to get longer valuable views in suggested. Oh, and one other thing that I want to talk about before we jump into those epic steps is asking people to subscribe on your video. If you notice, in my most recent videos in the past Couple of months. I don't ask you to subscribe because here's the deal. If you are watching your audience retention graphs, you you're probably going to see a drop off in views when you ask people to subscribe because it's kind of invasive. They maybe have just jumped on your video for the first time, no idea who you are, and you're asking them to subscribe. You haven't proven to them that you're valuable. You haven't proven to them that they should come back and watch your content. I actually suggest not even asking people to subscribe in the first half of your video. If you want to ask people to subscribe, wait till the end. Most people understand how YouTube works nowadays and if they like what they're hearing from you and you're providing valuable content that helps them, they're going to subscribe to you anyways. So I would just save that call to action to subscribe to the end or potentially even leaving it off. All right, let's jump into that first step to growing a YouTube channel from scratch. Even if you're starting from zero views and zero subscribers, the first thing you need to do is you need to understand your niche. You need to clearly understand your target audience if you're going to create videos that get in front of them, that YouTube recommends them, that YouTube suggests them. YouTube is super competitive, but it's still possible to break out if you clearly make a niche. For example, beauty bloggers. There are so many beauty channels, but how can you break out what can be your specialty? Maybe you teach redheads skincare. Okay, so all the redheads in the world may end up finding your channel and learning how to do skincare because they may have different skincare than say a blonde or brunette or somebody with darker toned skin. Or what about a tech review channel? Yes, there are lots on YouTube. But what if you focused on helping the 55 plus niche? What if you focus on helping those baby boomers that are just starting to having to use cell phones. They're finally accepting this new technology they're getting on iPads, they're using their laptop more. What if you could teach them an easy to follow steps, how to get started with this tech or what they should understand about tech, or how to buy the right iPad or how to buy the right phone when they don't necessarily understand the constant changing of tech. That's a great niche. Or if you're a business coach, you're probably not a business coach to all businesses in the world. Maybe you're a Business coach to brick and mortar stores, businesses that have an actual storefront. Maybe you're a business coach to service based businesses so people who offer retainer packages, services packages. Or maybe you're a business coach for product based businesses so products that are on Etsy or Shopify who are selling an actual product online but don't have a brick and mortar store. You can see how it seems like there's all this content out there. But what if you get very specific and be that go to channel for one specific niche. That's how you're really going to break out and grow a YouTube channel from scratch. Now the second step is not going too niche. But wait a minute, Trina, didn't you just tell me to go niche? Yes, I did. But here's when you go too niche. When you are coming up with these topic ideas and you're thinking about your target audience in that niche that you're really trying to target, you don't want to go too specific because they may not actually be searching for that. So example, in my YouTube for Creatives membership site, I had a student who was creating content for busy overwhelmed moms. What happened was her videos were becoming so very niche that the topic she was creating videos on wasn't even being searched on YouTube frequently. So we gotta reel that back, create videos that people are searching for. But thinking about that niche person in our mind and how I figure this out is I use a tool called TubeBuddy to see how often that topic is being searched on YouTube. So let me show you how I do that.

Once you install TubeBuddy, you'll have this little guy up here. And what I do is I go to Keyword Explorer from here. This is where I'm going to type in a topic. So how to be productive as a mom. What I'm looking for is I want to see how many times this is search each month. You see this doesn't even have that here. Because look, if we put in how to be productive, you can see number of searches per month is 70k. When we get so niche as to a specific person in our title, that can really limit who we reach.

But.

But if we put how to be productive as our topic and then we talk to moms or in our thumbnail we really create imagery. That's for moms. That's going to help you get that target audience for your specific niche. Again, we could do how to be productive in College and see what that result could be. Now see how to be productive in College only has 650 searches per month. So even if you get every single person who's searching how to be productive in College, it's only 650 people. So if you're wanting to grow a channel, 650 views isn't great. I would look for anything above 1,000 here. And again, it may just be broadening your topic, but making sure you're speaking to that specific niche in your video and in your thumbnail.

The third step you need to take to start a YouTube channel from scratch is your research. Look, you cannot just create a video now and throw it up on YouTube. It might hit, but nine times out of 10 it's not going to hit. It's not going to do what you want it to do, and all the time you put into creating this video is going to be wasted. So in that last tip, I Talked about using TubeBuddy and really finding those topics and those ideas that people are searching that your niche is also wanting. That's part of your research phase. I also want you to type those topic ideas into YouTube search and watch some of those videos that are ranking in search. I know we talked about search, but I want you to see what people are doing in those videos. What I want you to look for are the videos that are getting a lot of views. But that channel doesn't have as many subscribers as views because that is showing us that YouTube is recommending that content to more people. So that video either has a good click through rate, a good audience retention, it's getting people to watch more content. So watch those videos, see what they're doing in that video, what's making that video successful. One of my favorite YouTube educators, Darrel Eve, says you have to be a student of YouTube to do well on YouTube. You've got to watch some YouTube content to understand what is working on YouTube. So I suggest watching like maybe half an hour to an hour of YouTube every week. He actually suggests doing that every single day. But I know you're busy, so just commit to watching some YouTube every single week to see how people are creating content and see what YouTube content looks like. The fourth step is you have got to give value. Growing a YouTube channel in 2019 is highly competitive. But everybody that's uploading content isn't doing it right or providing value. What you want to do is think about what your content is going to be before you even create it. Whether you're an entertainment vlog channel or you're a business trying to get more qualified leads from YouTube, you want to give value. Here on YouTube, especially as a business owner, you have got to build your know, like and trust. Here on YouTube, video is the fastest way to grow know, like and trust. So if you're giving pure value, helping them, solving them a pain point, that's really going to help you grow your YouTube channel faster and help you get more leads into your business. By creating highly valuable videos, people are going to be more likely to watch the entire length of your video. And that is going to be key to showing up in suggested videos that we talked about earlier. So how do you know if your video is valuable? Well, YouTube actually gives you that data. If you go into your audience retention graph for each video, you're going to see exactly when people are leaving. If you're saying something that's causing people to leave. If you're opening your videos and it's not getting people's attention, this is where you're going to find that information. Let me show you where to find that.

So to find your audience retention graphs, you're going to want to look at each individual video. So you want to go here to videos and pull up a video that you may have and then go over here to the analytics of this particular video. And you'll see right down here is your audience retention graph. So you can click see more and actually watch this video through and see where these dips are. So when you hit play, you can actually see when people are leaving and what these dips are and when they come back. That's what you're looking for with your audience retention graphs.

The next step is doing some competitor analysis. So go on YouTube, who's creating content similar to you, More importantly, who's targeting your audience? So if we go back to that beauty vlogger who's creating content for that redhead that needs better skincare to learn how to take care of their skin, it doesn't necessarily need to be a beauty vlogger. Maybe it's a fashion blogger, maybe it's a dietitian. You want to think about who is your audience watching. Then you can go to their videos and look at their most popular videos. So the way you do it is you go to their channel, go to their video tabs, and then click Sort by most popular. And those are the topics that your audience wants that has been validated so you can create your own videos with that topic. Now, you're not copying them word for word. You're using that as a guide to create content that you know your audience wants. So go ahead, do some competitor analysis. Write down about four or five channels that are targeting the same people you are. Plus, this is really going to help you come up with great content to be found in suggested videos. Moving on to that next step, to grow your, your YouTube channel from scratch. And you have got to plan your content. Like I said earlier, we cannot just create any old video, throw it up on YouTube with no plan in mind. I really like to think about that quote, fail to plan, plan to fail. That's exactly True here on YouTube. What I suggest doing is always scripting your content. Now, you don't have to script it word for word, but you need to have a clear idea what your hook is going to be, how you're going to deliver your content, steps, tips, advice, and your call to action at the end of your video, which we're going to jump into a little bit more further down in this training. But your call to action at the end of your video is really, really going to be important when it comes to YouTube suggesting more of your content. I have really seen a world of difference when people start planning their content and they're following this format that works on YouTube. That's why it's so important to have this plan in mind. Plus, it's going to save you time shooting this video. It's going to save you time editing. So it's just a good idea all around. The next step is to optimize your video. Now, when I say optimize, you may be thinking metadata, tags, da, da, da, da, da, all of that stuff. But I'm actually going to tell you other things to optimize instead. Remember how I told you YouTube is evolving as a platform and being more personalized to the actual user logged in. This is why it's important to optimize your video. Looking at these things, the first thing is your thumbnail and your title. You really want to create thumbnails that catch people's attention. You want to be on that thumbnail because people are connected to people. So if you can have your face somewhere on that thumbnail and also minimize the amount of text that you're putting on that thumbnail. Remember, most people are watching from their mobile device. I think it's like over 60 or 70% of people are watching YouTube from their mobile devices. Your thumbnail is going to be shrunk really small in YouTube on the mobile device. So keep the text very minimal. When you're crafting your titles, it's really important to craft them for humans and not necessarily the SEO robot. So cramming a bunch of Keywords in there is not going to help people click on your video. We don't care how many keywords that you throw into that title. We actually care about what are you promising to us in that title? What are you pitching to solve for us in that title? What I like to do is really plan out that thumbnail and that title before even shooting my content so I know how to tie in my hook, which is that first five seconds they're going to see once they click on my thumbnail to tie in to that title and thumbnail so that they are reassured they're going to get what I promised them in that title and thumbnail. How do you know if your title and your thumbnails are causing people to click? Well, let me show you how to find that in YouTube Analytics.

Alright, now we're back to this video. To find your click through rate for each individual video, you want to go over here to your reach viewers. Once you click on that, you're going to see your impression. Click through rate is 5.7% again. Every single time you post a video, you want to try to do better and get that number as high as possible.

The next step that you want to do is engage. Whether you have one comment, no comments, 100 comments, you want to engage with those viewers. Like I said, it doesn't matter how many you have. Anybody who watches your video is valuable. One thing that I do to try to coax people to comment on videos is I will put my own comment in the comments below here. You'll see and it has a question to get people engaged. Or you ask right here, ask a question to get people engaged. Look, I can totally understand getting wrapped in the number and think, wow, only 50 people watch my video. Only 100 people watch my video. That's still 50 people. 50 people who took time out of their day and watched your video. So if they take the time to comment on your video, comment back. I know we can seem like there's a lot of other important things to do, but show that viewer that you appreciate them and engage. Alright, we're moving right along. We planned, we researched, we shot our videos. Now it's time to promote it. Because just posting a video on YouTube is not like Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. You need to tell people that you have a video out. So Whether you have five Facebook followers, 10 Instagram followers, an email list of some sort, tell those people when you post a video, trust me, it's going to help you get that little extra oomph to your channel. When you're just getting started, let people know, Tell them, tell them where to go, tell them to subscribe. They're already following you somewhere, so they're probably going to find your content valuable. So tell them. Also, if you want to tell your family and your friends, I'm sure they're going to support you. I know from experience that I didn't really tell my family and friends that I had a YouTube channel. I kind of kept that secret. But if you don't want to keep a secret, tell your family and your friends. They will support you. Moving on to branding and whether you're an already established business or you're just getting started on YouTube, you need to have some type of consistency and branding branding on your channel. Yes, this does include colors, fonts being consistent across the board so that when they see a thumbnail on YouTube, whether it's on the homepage suggested, wherever they recognize it's your video, it's your channel. But you also want to think about other branding elements like introducing your video the same way, having some common habits in your videos that people can always expect. Uploading schedule, those types of things are part of your branding consistency as well. That next step that you need to do is understand and look at your analytics. You want to start posting YouTube videos immediately, as quick as possible. Just do it. It's going to be scary, but here's the thing. Once you post that YouTube video, we are going to get some amazing analytics from YouTube that is going to really help you craft and improve your YouTube strategy. A couple of things that I look at are click through rates, audience retention, end screen clickthroughs. You can actually see all the primary analytics that I suggest in this video right here. When you're done watching this video, make sure you watch this one to see the analytics you should be tracking. But this is the biggest mistake that I made when I got started on YouTube. Analytics kind of just overwhelmed me. I didn't know where to get started. But once I realized what I was looking at and the power of this data, it is really going to change the way you grow a channel and how fast you can grow a channel if you understand what's working and what's not. Definitely make time every single month to analyze, audit, look at your YouTube channel analytics to see how to move forward and do better. Now before I share this last step with you, I want to make sure you're still with me. Let me know down in the comments that you are still here. Say I'm still Still here or loving this? Let me know in the comments. And the last step to growing a YouTube channel from scratch is being consistent. And when I say consistent, I'm just talking about one video a week. That's all you need to do, one video a week. I manage this by shooting all of my content in one day. Today I'm shooting around 10 videos, and I'm just doing it in one morning. So as you start planning out your content, you know what you're going to say. It's going to be a lot easier for you to shoot these videos back to because let's be real, we don't always have our hair and makeup done. When you take the time to do this, I want to make sure you're creating multiple videos so you can stay consistent on YouTube. When you're consistent on YouTube, people know when to come back to your video. YouTube knows to suggest your content because you're creating consistent new content that people want to watch. Now, if you're not sure how this is all going to work and how to fit it into your schedule, I actually have a video that's on your screen right now that shows you exactly what my workflow looks like, from video idea to posting it and promoting it on YouTube. So if you want to see how I plan my videos and get them uploaded, my entire process, make sure you click that video that's on your screen right now, and I'll see you over there.