The 3 WORST things you can do on YouTube

Look, I know you're binging everything you can find on YouTube on how to grow a channel. Or maybe you have a channel and you've been working at it and nothing seems to make it grow. What if I told you there's probably three things that you're doing that are killing the growth of your YouTube channel? Don't worry, I'm going to tell you what those are and how you can fix that asap. Hey, welcome back. My name is Trena. If you are new and on this channel, I help you find the confidence to do YouTube. And to have confidence, YouTube is to know what you're doing is actually going to work right. So one of the biggest things that I see from my clients as students is really focusing on keywords and tags. I know you've seen the videos out there, how to rank in YouTube search, how to find the perfect tags, how to research the tags. But I want to let you in on a little secret here. While yes, researching your videos and trying to find a good topic to create a video on is important for spending all your time researching a tag or keyword phrase that has low competition, high search is not the best use of your time. Because look, YouTube search is different for every single person. Even though you may find a tag that says good in low competition, high search, it doesn't mean it's going to rank in search. For example, one day I was doing research for a client of mine who is an artist. So I was searching a lot of art tutorials and tips and really focusing on her strategy. The next day when I came back to my computer and started searching for my channel and what topics people were looking for. The second video in the search term, YouTube tips was a video on mural painting. Tips had nothing to do with YouTube advice. YouTube tips. But since YouTube takes into account my previous watch and search history, they are going to recommend to me videos they think I want to see. They think I want. As in YouTube thinks it knows me better so it's going to serve up videos it thinks that I want to see. So what that means is what I see on search for one particular keyword may be completely different from what you see in search and may be completely different from the next person. And if you go into Google incognito window, which doesn't take into account your previous search and watch history, that result is going to be different as well. So when you're spending all your time focusing on this perfect keyword or tag, it doesn't really matter in the end because when you upload that video. YouTube already knows what that video is about by the words that you are saying. In addition to search results being different for every individual, the traffic you get from videos from search end up being a little bit less valuable to you because generally when somebody finds you in search compared to Suggested, you're going to get half the amount of watch time. So what I mean by that is let's say your video is five minutes. Somebody who finds you in search may watch your video maybe a minute and a half, whereas somebody who finds you in suggested is more likely to watch your video for like three or four minutes. You're going to get more valuable viewers from suggested and browse features than you are in search anyways. Now remember, as soon as we go through these three things, I'm going to tell you how you can fix them. So I want to move on to the second thing you're probably doing wrong and it's not planning your videos. I know you're busy. I am too. I have two children, I have clients, I have students, and there's a lot on our plates. But you really need to think through your video and research it before you even turn your camera on. So when I'm talking about planning your video, some of the steps I want you to walk through when you are planning your video is research. So go into a Google Incognito window. Remember, we don't want to take our past search history with us and see what videos are showing up in search. What videos have more views than the channel has subscribed subscribers? How is that video creator opening that video? What are they saying now? I don't want you to do this to copy what they are saying. I just want you to see if you can figure out why this video resonates with viewers so that they have more views than the channel has subscribers. I also want you to kind of script out your video. And I know whether you're a vlogger or maybe you're an entertainment channel, that can be kind of hard. But I want you to have a game plan for that video before you turn your camera on. Because you need to understand that first five seconds of your video is critical to get somebody to watch. So if you do anything at all, at least just try to figure out how you're going to open that video to get people to watch it. And then a little bonus tip. The next thing that I would really focus on is the end of your video. How are you going to get people to watch another video? That's how you're Going to show up more in search and suggested is if your video causes people to watch more videos. Okay? Now, that third thing is titles and thumbnails. And these can be tricky. They are difficult for me as well. I hate coming up with titles and I hate graphic design. That's just not my strength. But we need to understand that those titles and those thumbnails are the key reason why people are going to click on our videos. If our video is perfect and filmed on a professional studio and edited by a professional editor, that all doesn't matter if we can't get somebody to click on our video because of our thumbnail and title. So I don't want you to just slap on a title as an afterthought as you're uploading that video. I want you to go back to that planning phase and really come up with that title before you start filming. Now, it doesn't have to be the end title that you are going to use, but at least have a general direction or a general idea what that title is going to be, because that's going to help you craft your content around that title. And then with thumbnails, it can be very difficult. Difficult to kind of show in graphic or photo style the emotion in the video or the outcome of the video. So when you're coming up with your thumbnail, you need to think about your target audience. That's why it's so important to know who you're creating videos for. The images that a teenage boy might click on are quite different than what my target audience, usually women ages 25 to 40 are clicking on. So I want you to think about in that thumbnail, what. What kind of images is your audience going to respond to? And I also want you to use that title and thumbnail as complimentary together. What I mean by that is I don't want you to slap the title onto the thumbnail. I want you to really minimize the amount of text you have on that thumbnail because they should work together. They should see the thumbnail. So the thumbnail grabs their attention with image, and then the title really convinces them to click on that video. All right, if you've got questions about that, let me know down in the comments. Now, the most important part, how are you going to fix this and get on the right track and start growing your channel? The first thing you need to do is research. I know I mentioned this quite a few times, but I want you to use those tags that you're searching as topics. We do not need to crush keywords and SEO into titles and into our videos. Because like I said, YouTube already knows what we are saying. For example, some of the biggest niches right now is family vloggers, mom vloggers. And they aren't putting any specific keywords in their titles. So what's making them successful? Their thumbnail and their title is causing people to click on it when they see it on YouTube. And it's engaging throughout the entire video, meaning people are watching to the end and they're getting people to click on another video. That's why family vloggers, videos that aren't keyword researched or stuffed with keywords in the title take off and get so many views. It's because they're really focusing on those titles and thumbnails to get clicked on. They're focusing on the story they're sharing in that video. And then they're also getting people to watch more videos. So instead of really getting stressed out and overwhelmed on tags and what tags you're going to use, just use that as like a topic. And then when you are adding tags to your videos for optimization, just add words and phrases that make sense to that video. So, for example, this is why your channel isn't growing. I'm going to use tags like grow on YouTube, how to grow on YouTube. YouTube mistakes. I'm not really getting specific with research. I'm just using keywords and phrases. So that makes sense to this video. The second thing you're going to do is you're going to set up a schedule. Look, I know you see my schedule behind me and that really helps me stay consistent with the planning process of my video. I have my entire video plan right now in a tool called Asana, which I'm going to talk about here in a second. I have my script in there, I have my title in there. I have an idea of what I want the thumbnail to look like because I did the research. So by setting up a schedule to know this is a day you're going to research your videos and this is a day you're going to film. That's what's going to help you really plan out better videos. So, so, for example, every first Tuesday of the month for me is a filming day. I have it blocked in my calendar. It's reoccurring every single month so that I don't schedule appointments, I don't schedule client calls, I don't schedule any work on that particular Tuesday, which means I need to have all my videos planned before that. That's where I'm a little bit flexible. But I do know that that time is coming up towards the end of the month. So I look at my calendar to see where I can really research my videos the week before I film. And I schedule about four hours to really hone in on on my plan for the videos I'm going to shoot. Now, the third thing you're going to do, you heard me talk about Asana, and that is setting up a workflow. This is going to be game changing for your productivity and the quality of your videos. Trust me on this one. If you're anything like me, you have ideas all the time pop up in your head and then you end up losing them. Whether you write them down somewhere on that notebook or somewhere on that post it and the post it goes missing. You really want to keep all your ideas in a centralized location. So in Asana, I can keep all of my ideas in there so I can come back to them and then flesh them out and research them. So I'm not having to go back to the drawing board to figure out what videos I wanted to do. Plus I'm not having to recreate that wheel every single time because I have a checklist with things that are already done for me every single time I film a video. Now, if you want to really continue learning more about how to grow your channel, I've pulled together three of my best videos that are going to help you grow your YouTube channel on your screen right now. So click that playlist that's on your screen right now. I got the best ones for you and I'll see you in that next video.