The #1 Mistake Small YouTube Channels Make

I work with clients who are just Getting started on YouTube, clients who have been on YouTube and feel their channel is stuck, and clients who are growing a YouTube channel and want to grow it even faster. But there are some common mistakes that come up time and time again for all three of these types of people. So I want to share them with you so you can make sure you're not doing them and you can start to get better results on your channel. More views that lead to more leads, more sales, and hopefully more clients. The first mistake is not clear on what value they provide. Especially if you are a small channel just getting started. You really need to find your corner of YouTube to break out. And that means you really got to be as precise as possible on the content that you are creating for the person you are trying to attract. Because that is going to help the algorithm be able to find your people faster. So instead of how to save money, maybe it's saving money for college and you have an entire channel on that. Or maybe it's saving money in your 30s and I'm actually giving away a channel that I'm going to share some examples on. But you can see how just saving money for college and saving money in your 30s is going to be a different type of content. You're also going to package those videos differently as well. And while maybe you're like, I just don't want to focus on a niche. What if I miss out getting more clients or more customers? You do have the opportunity to onion ring out. I like to call your audience after you have that core. So you first need to build a loyal audience based on the clear value that you are going to provide your audience on your YouTube channel. The thing is, people don't care about who you are. They need to know what you are going to do for them so they know you're going to help them solve their very specific problem that they're having. And you're going to create a lot of content to help them solve that problem. So that's how you're going to get them to come back time and time again. And that's how YouTube is going to understand the best person for your channel and put your videos in front of those people for free. Let's take Janelle, who is a client of mine as an example. We can see here on her channel that she says new classes every Thursday, yoga and functional movement. But who is this for? Women? Men? You can see how the content is probably going to be a little bit different if it's for men versus women, 20 something women, 60 something women, postpartum women. Again, even those segments within women is going to have different types of content because all of those, all of those segments of women are going to have different problems that they want to see solved on a channel that's promising yoga and functional movement. Do you see how, if we are clear on who this is for, YouTube can start to find more of those people? Whereas if YouTube were just to push this out to any random person, what are your chances that YouTube is going to find the right viewer for this channel? So let's look, for example, let's type in the YouTube search Bar yoga for women and we can already see the different categories that are being searched on YouTube. Over 40 at home. Sorry, over 50. Over 40. Fertility. Right. So if we look at yoga for women over 50, what are the types of content that are being talked about? Right. Yoga poses you should do daily 55 plus years. 12 minute yoga for women over 50. Gentle mood balancing. Right now let's go back and search yoga for women. Actually let's do yoga for postpartum. And how different the content is not only packaged but the topics as well. Feel good. Postnatal, 10 minute postnatal. Release tension and feel refreshed. Relieve back pain and neck pain. Core healing and flattening. Right. This is why it's so important to know who you are talking to specifically. So YouTube can find these people and you can focus on the content that will help you to find these people for your channel. Now I've been working with Janelle, my YouTube coaching experience and her niche, who she's speaking to is actually lifters. Weightlifters. Right. And her content is even more different than those examples that I brought up on my screen. Right. And so that's going to help her start focusing on the content lifters are looking for to help them lift more and reach their personal records. As I mentioned, this is something that I help my clients get clarity on. And so if you're struggling with who is your target audience or what is the value promise of your channel, that is something we can work with together. If you're interested in doing that, you can go to trina little.com forward/coaching, join us and I can start helping you kind of map that out and get clarity within the next 24 hours. I actually want to go over another example because I've heard from you guys in the comments that you really like seeing examples. And so this is Amy's channel and you can see she says ready to ditch financial stress for good I will first say there's a lot on this channel banner that kind of makes it not clear on the value of her channel. You can do it. Let's do it. Your source for all things money. And then this teeny tiny little text right here. I tell my clients in the YouTube coaching program, let's make your value of your channel short, concise and clear. They should be able to read it and instantly know what value you are going to bring them. They've got to be able to come to your channel and within five seconds know that. So ditch financial stress for good is broad. Who is this talking to? What problems may they have? Somebody who is just getting out of college has a different type of financial stress than somebody in their 30s, than somebody who is saving for college for their kids, than somebody who is an empty nester, than somebody who is trying to retire. Right. For example, we're going to look up managing money and we can start to see a bunch of different categories that are going to attract different people and different types of content. So if we look at managing Money in your 30s, we're going to see what type of content comes up. No savings at 30, right? That's a big pain point for a lot of 30 year olds. Major money milestones to accomplish in your 30s. This is screaming out. This is for me if I'm 30, okay, here are my major milestones. I need to hit everything you need to know about finances in your 30s. Because you have different financial obligations in your 30s than maybe you do in college. College than maybe you do in your 50s. Right. So we can start to see how this is more packaged for a specific audience and how it's solving the problem. Now if we go back to managing money in marriage, you can start to see how this type of content is even more different. So the secret to financial success as a couple, what is the process for combining finances after you get married? How to manage money in a marriage. People who are looking for the problem of managing money in their marriage are going to be more attracted to this type of content than if you're creating content for someone in their 30s. Right. This is just an example of why you need to be very specific on who you're creating content for. So YouTube can find those people. Titles and thumbnails are also a very common mistake so many of my clients make and I help them with, but I'm not going to dive into that for this particular video. I've done plenty of videos I will link right here that dive into specifics when it comes to title and thumbnails. But one thing I'm constantly doing with my clients in the YouTube coaching experience is reviewing their script or their video game plan and specifically looking at how they are opening their videos or their video hook. Let's take a look at Katie's video. Managing the seating. All right, now, Katie is an art teacher, and if we look at her channel, she says she's managing the mess with Katie Jarvis. Now, I could go into a little bit more detail about how we need to be clear that this is managing the mess for art teachers or getting more specific around art teachers. But for this example, we want to talk about our hooks and our audience retention. So let's listen to the first couple of seconds of Katie's video here.

Hey there. It's Katie Jarvis with managing the mess. We haven't met before. I'm a K through 6 elementary art teacher and I teach here at a title I school just outside of Washington.

D.C. okay, we are 10 seconds into this video and she's just telling me who she is. Viewers do not care who we are, especially in the first 10 seconds. They need to hear instantly, what are you doing for them? They need to be reassured that they are going to learn what you've promised to them in the title in the thumbnail. I don't have access to Katie's audience retention, but I would be curious to see how much her audience left during this video. Because within 10 seconds, if she's not sharing value, what are they doing? They're coming over here looking for another video. Maybe they're going back to their search results to find another video that's going to deliver value to them. I want to share something else. So let's keep watching this so I can share some more examples of things that you don't want to do and how to fix it.

In this video, we're going to talk all about tables and chairs and stools and seating charts. I do believe in giving the students.

So you hear say, in this video, I'm going to talk about. Viewers already know that that's why they clicked on the video. They clicked on the video because the title and the thumbnail was telling them that's what she was going to talk about and they want to hear that. But now we're almost 20 seconds into the video and they have heard nothing about what they came for. So you really want to think through that when you are planning your videos, because YouTube is going to push content that people actually watch. The good news is if you have YouTube videos already posted YouTube will give you audience retention graphs for you to see the videos that you'd had good hooks on and the videos that you had not so good hooks on. So the way you're going to find which ones you had good hooks on is you're going to come into your analytics, you're going to come to content, you want to make sure you're clicked on videos and then here key moments for audience retention. These are my above typical intros. So what I'm going to do before I script my next round of hooks for my videos, I'm going to watch these couple and see why did people watch longer here? How did the title tie in with my first 10 to 15 seconds of the video? And I can also look at my below average hooks and see, okay, what do I make sure I don't want to do? Because what I did in these videos I don't want to do again. That's why it's so important to start getting videos on YouTube because then you can have real live data to help you make decisions with your content. Again, this is something that I help my clients develop all the time. They craft their titles and their thumbnails and they send me their hooks and I provide them feedback based on the experience I've had on YouTube for 10 years, helping over hundreds of YouTube channels grow their audience and build stronger content. But if you aren't ready for that one on one feedback and help yet, I did create a mini course that breaks down exactly how I plan every single one of my videos for the maximum results possible. And I also give you the video game plan that I'm reading from right now to help me deliver my content in the best structure possible and the template my clients use for their videos. And well, in fact, I just got this email from somebody who recently bought the video game plan and here's what she had to say. It was so good. And that video game plan was the most detailed YouTube training I've ever had. You can get it now@trinalo.com forward slash video plan. There's another mistake so many small YouTubers make and that's following bad advice about how the YouTube algorithm actually works. And there is so much false information about it. So the video that's on your screen right now, I'm going to share the YouTube algorithm lie. You're believing that's actually keeping your channel stuck. Click to watch that now.