STOP Guessing—Do This to Grow Your Small Channel

Whether YouTube treats small YouTube channels differently than large YouTube channels. The fact of the matter is we are never really going to know that answer. But I'm going to share with you some data in this video that proves if you have a small YouTube channel in 2024, you can still grow it. And I'm going to tell you exactly what these small YouTube channels have done to see the growth that I'm about to share with you. And again, we could argue back and forth whether YouTube suppresses small YouTube channels or promotes small YouTube channels. But if we're taking the time to argue that and complain and whine about the YouTube algorithm, you are wasting your precious time of actually doing something that will matter and will change the trajectory of your YouTube channel. So, like I said, we can argue or you can just decide. I'm going to figure out what I need to do on my YouTube channel to see better results. Deal. I don't want you to think I'm blowing any kind of smoke up your butt. So I want to walk through some real life examples of channels that I have helped grow over the last six months in 2024. Then I'm going to share with you some of the things I suggesting or advising these small YouTube channels to do to continue to see the growth. Now, this first client I want to walk you through came to me with about 10,000 subscribers. And if you're thinking that's not small, I've got more examples for you coming up. Within 90 days of working with me and implementing my advice, implementing my system, she was able to grow 2800 subscribers in 90 days and get over 85,000 thousand views on her channel in that 90 day period. All right, let's talk about an even smaller YouTube channel. This channel started 2024 with four subscribers. Basically brand new, right? In just one month, the month of May, she was able to grow her YouTube channel by 516 subscribers. On top of that, she got 21,000 views within a one month time period. And I'm going to show you one more because I want you to know this can realistically happen if you are doing the right things for your channel. This client started the year with about 259 subscribers. After working with me and doing the action steps I'm about to share with you, he grew over 400 brand new subscribers, 24,000 views, and on top of that booked two one on one clients straight from his YouTube videos. And he was only posting one video a week. And I want to point that out because some of the times we think we aren't going to have the time to commit to YouTube because we have to post multiple videos or we think I just got to post more videos to see faster results. Neither one of these are true. Because if you are doing the right strategy and the right system, you can still grow a small YouTube channel on just one video a week. Okay, go ahead and hit the like button if you want to see that kind of growth on your small YouTube channel. What's the secret? Right. So I'm going to walk through three action items that helped my clients, and then I'm going to give you a few more quick tips at the end of the video to take that growth of your channel to that next level. The first action item that my clients had to realize, and you need to realize, too, if you're going to grow YouTube, you have to take YouTube seriously. What do I mean by seriously? Listen, you don't have to eat, sleep, and bleed YouTube the way I do, but you also just can't haphazardly post whatever video that you're feeling that week. You've got to strategically plan content that is going to not only attract your target audience or the people you are trying to attract, but you need to be creating content in a way that that starts a binge session on your channel. So you want to create videos that will get people to watch 1, 2, 3, 4, possibly 15 videos without even realizing they're clicking on that next video. Much like if you're going to start season one of Bridgerton on Netflix within three days, you realize you've watched all three seasons. The other piece of taking YouTube seriously is you're not just throwing videos up because you're planning them with a strategy, and you're also creating titles and thumbnails before you create the video content. Okay, let me talk about this for a minute. You need to know that you're packaging your video in a way that people are going to click it. So what you don't want to be doing if you want to see your small YouTube channel grow, is throw up whatever video you want while it's uploading, come up with a title and a thumbnail instead. What I teach all of my clients that you just heard from their results today, I teach them to come up with the title of that video, come up with a thumbnail concept of the video, and then let's make sure the first five to 10 seconds of your video ties into the promise that they saw from the title and your thumbnail. It sparks curiosity, and it makes them want to keep watching Your video, which is going to lead me into the second action step that you need to do to grow a small YouTube channel. You need to be clear on who your audience is. I'm going to give you an example here, but let me explain a little bit what this means, because I see when my clients come to me, this is kind of where they're struggling, and it's what's holding their channel back from actually growing every video that you create. When you're creating that title and the thumbnail, that title and thumbnail needs to be very clear who your video is for. What you don't want to be doing is creating very generic titles and thumbnails and hoping like somebody will find it. Your audience will not be clicking on these generic videos because they have a very specific problem that they're searching for on YouTube. And if you aren't talking to them specifically in the language and the title and on the thumbnail, they're never going to realize your video is actually for them. Now, if they aren't clicking on your video, YouTube is not going to have the data having these specific views, the right views on your videos. YouTube uses that data of who those viewers are to then find other viewers on YouTube that has very similar watching behavior. So if we aren't getting the right people to watch our videos, the algorithm isn't going to be able to find more of the right people. And. And so YouTube won't promote your videos, and YouTube won't push your content to more people. And this is what's going to keep your channel stagnant. This is kind of where the topic of niching comes into play. But there's a little bit more to it than just niching. So I want to walk through an example now. I went to my Instagram and looked at some of the last people that most recently follow me on Instagram, and one of those people was a fitness coach. So I'm going to use this as an example, and I'm going to walk you through this on YouTube. I know that YouTube may seem like it's super saturated already. In fact, I saw this comment on another video that said this exact thing, that YouTube is so saturated right now, but there is so much opportunity for you to stand out, no matter what your niches. And that's what I'm going to walk you through right here on this exercise in YouTube to show you how you can break out, stand out, and really eliminate a lot of competition. Okay, so we have YouTube pulled up here. You're going to go to search now we're talking about the fitness coach. So if we just type in fitness coach and we search, obviously that's going to be incredibly saturated, right? So many fitness coaches. We see, you know, a 2.8 million subscriber channel. We see, you know, 15,000 with 90,000 views. We also see 96,000 views. Okay, so fitness coach we think is saturated. I want to point something out here though, with this fitness coach search term. Look, what is showing up? Okay, for me, there's nobody here that I would want to click on. Like, this isn't who I want to be learning from with the fitness coach. Like, sorry, dudes, I don't want to learn from a dude how to get my fitness in check. So this is very important. When I'm talking about who is your audience? You need to map this out. Male, female parents, non parents. Is your target audience in their 20s versus in their 40s. All of these will distinguish the different pain points and the different way your going to market to that audience on YouTube. Men and women have different fitness problems. Parents versus non parents have very different problems. Someone in their 20s versus someone in their 40s, very different problems. So when you can start to really speak to that person, let's say you're speaking to me. Female parent about to hit her 40s. If I could go to fitness coach and find that specifically, that's who I'm going to go to. So let's do a little bit more digging now if we just add fitness coach for women. Okay. Fitness coach for women, sure. Probably oversaturated, but again, am I seeing anything that's calling out me, a mom almost in her 40s? I am not seeing anything particular here that's telling me this is going to be the right person for me. I don't know if I would search fitness coach for women. I would probably look more problem specific when it comes to fitness coaching. So again, I'm just walking you through each step here to try and do for yourself to get clear and specific on who your person is. Okay? So now we are going to take it a level deeper. Fitness coach for moms. That is neat. And some of them are still showing up. But I want to see you call out in the title in the thumbnail that you get me. All right. New fitness routine. My new fitness routine as a mom of four best fitness hacks for busy moms. Okay, we're getting a little bit there, but I have some very specific pain points. That is why it's important for you to understand your audience's pain points. And speak to them because they're going to go to YouTube very much like me and search that problem. Now, let's say fitness coach for women in 40s. Okay? Now I am probably going to search this first when I come to YouTube. I'm not just going to search a fitness coach. If I do, you're going to see what I get. And that's not what I'm looking for. So I'm getting more nuanced so I know that my search is better. So now we see why women need strength training. Again, this is what is helping you get more detailed. Now you are going to want to create a full content strategy that is not just talking about fitness coach for women in their 40s. What are the problems that they are having? So one of my problems may be quick, effective workouts for women in 40s. Now, when you get this specific, you can see how the opportunity is there, right? Because this is who you are targeting. This is the person that you want to show up. Okay? This is what your audience is going to be searching. They may be searching other things like, and I'll pull that IQ up. So we'll take this. We can go into the keywords part of that IQ. Quick, effective workouts for women in 40s. Okay? So we don't have any matching keywords. So what you can do is broaden that a little bit to get some questions. So workouts for women in 40s, you add this to Vidiq, we're going to see some of the trending videos here. We're also going to see other related keywords. So keywords related to workouts for Women in the 40s, this is your audience. This is who you are going to sell fitness coaching to sell fitness programs to, right? This is why you may not be attracting the masses. Like, you're not trying to get all women to watch your channel. You're trying to get your videos in front of the audience that is right for your channel. And that's how you're going to break out. You're not going to break out for the topic fitness coach. You're not going to break out for the topic fitness coach for women, but you are going to break out for the specific, specific concerns that your audience may be having. Once you can clearly understand your target audience, that's how you can get specific in the videos that you create. So the right people come to your videos and YouTube understands who to put your videos in front of, the quicker you can get people to understand the value you're going to provide them every week on your videos, the more likely they will subscribe to your channel without needing to do any kitschy subscriber hacks like asking people to subscribe. The third action step is you need to collect more data and analyze that data. Listen, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So if you're just doing the same type of videos over and over and over and expecting your channel to magically grow because one of those is magically going to hit, it's not going to happen. Yes, maybe pie in the sky, blue moon type activity, one video takes off. But you want to create a system that lets you be confident that your small channel is going to grow. YouTube analytics and I did an entire video about this right up here on what to be looking at in reading in your YouTube analytics gives you so much data because YouTube wants you to succeed. Because the more content that is good that if people is watching on YouTube, the more ads YouTube can sell on content. Thus YouTube makes more money. So YouTube wants creators creating good videos. So they give you all the information you need to know to understand how to make your videos better. Actually question, let me know in the comments. How often do you actually look at your analytics? Like not just look at the how your last video did in 1 to 10, but actually go in look at your video's audience retention, look at click through rate, look at keywords and videos that are trending for your channel. Let me know how often you're doing that. Because what I suggest my clients do is a full deep dive which maybe takes about an hour into their analytics and I have a checklist for them. I have like walkthrough process to do that. And I actually will do the monthly reviews for them. They can just send me a request to audit their YouTube channel analytics. And I do that for every single one of my clients that want it inside my program. Because if you don't get views on your videos, you're not going to get enough data to continue to understand how to grow your channel. You're not going to get the data on audience retention graphs, you're not going to get the data on videos that are suggesting your content. You're not going to give YouTube enough data to understand who to categorize you with. So when YouTube doesn't have that data, it has no idea where to put your videos. So it's just going to throw your videos out there to randos and hope that maybe one of those randos is the right person. But it is not Guaranteed. And this is what will slow down so much growth for those of you that have small YouTube channels. Now, I did mention earlier in this video that my clients only had to create one video a week. That is because we were very clear, very nuanced in who that audience they were trying to attract was. We are very clear in the title and thumbnail of those videos. We were very clear with the content, who those videos were for, so that we knew YouTube had enough data to understand who this video was for. Now, the other way you can start to get more data if you want to ramp it up, is you can increase publishing videos on your channel each week. If you have the time to publish two videos a week, but not dip in the quality of those videos, you're going to see a little bit quicker growth because you're going to get more data. But I know many of you that watch my content here on YouTube are business owners and I get the to do list that you have. And that is why I make sure I build strong strategies with my clients. So they only have to publish one video a week because they have so much other stuff going on in their business that realistically, one video a week is what they can do. So even with our clients that have under a thousand subscribers, there are some key data points that we are able to use to help tweak and improve our strategy. We're able to look at search terms that are driving traffic to their channel, which is telling us kind of how YouTube is categorizing our channel. We are also able to get a little bit of information on search traffic. So where our video or who our video is showing up alongside, this is again going to let us know, does YouTube truly understand who our audience is or are we in the suggested videos getting some really weird random content that's going to signal YouTube just doesn't know who we are for. We are also looking at click through rates. So are we doing a good enough job of getting people to want to click our videos and then audience retention once we get people to click, are we going to get people to watch our videos? Because if people click on your video and they don't watch it, that's going to signal to YouTube. You don't have good content, so it's not going to push that video to more people because you're not getting people to watch it. If you aren't getting this kind of data in your YouTube analytics right now or you're seeing very low click through rates, your content is not clear who it is. For now. I promise some bonus helpful tips that have caused my clients channels to really grow. So here they are. You have got to watch YouTube videos and you've got to watch some YouTube videos in your niche. Now I don't want you to watch channels that are similar to you, talk about the same content and get subconscious or worry about copying. What I want you to look at is how are they structuring their content. Also what kinds of topics are they talking about that are getting more views. I also want you to look at the comments of those videos. What are people saying, what are they asking for, what are they liking? Because if you don't understand how your audience is responding and engaging on YouTube, you're not going to be able to create content that they want to watch that will help you grow your small YouTube channel. The other bonus tip is you need to get outside perspective on your channel. I believe this so much that I finally found somebody to do a monthly YouTube date with where I will give her outside perspective on her channel and she will reciprocate with my channel. Because I can stare at my analytics for hours and really get way too deep. But then I could hear somebody that has an outside perspective really give me helpful things to work on because I'm so deep into my own content. The key in finding this person though is to make sure they understand YouTube analytics and they understand YouTube strategy. This is one of the main reasons that I built my YouTube coaching experience so I could be that person for my clients. Because my clients come to me just overwhelmed and frustrated about committing to YouTube and and not seeing the results that they had hoped for. But when they get my perspective, when I review their channel, when I give them feedback every time they submit something for me to look at, they're able to get an outside perspective that they wouldn't have looked at that oh, this video did really well. This topic, maybe we should talk more about this or this is a topic that is really starting to grow on your channel. Maybe we figure out how to double down on that or your click through rates actually not doing very well. Let's change the thumbnail like this or your audience retention is not. Well let's work on your video scripts to increase your audience retention to prove to YouTube they should promote your videos. That's exactly why there's three clients that I mentioned earlier were able to grow their channel. Not only did they get the one on one support from me, they got help and feedback from someone who truly understands how to grow a YouTube channel. Now if this is something that you're interested in getting my outside perspective being able to grow yourself small YouTube channel get out of this rut. Get on my waitlist. For the next time that I'm accepting new clients into my program, you can go to treeandlittle.com forward/waitlist and I will let you know when we have a spot available. I only take a small amount of clients at a time to ensure I can give my truly undivided attention to each client that I'm working with. Now, if you want to learn more ways to figure out how you can start being more consistent on YouTube and start growing your channel while you wait for that waitlist notification, watch the series of videos that's on your screen right now, because I'm diving into all of those topics and more to help you grow your small YouTube channel. So I'll see you over there.