Top 12 YouTube Mistakes You Are Making

It's okay if you're making any of these big YouTube mistakes, but if you want to grow your YouTube channel, you need to watch this entire video to learn how you can fix them and turn your channel around asap. Let's go. Hey, welcome back. My name is Trena. If you're new here and on this channel, I help you build the confidence to get on YouTube. Whether it's the confidence to be on video or. Or the confidence to know your video is going to thrive on YouTube, I'm here to help you do that. So make sure you click subscribe to this channel if you want to grow your YouTube channel and if you want to build that confidence. So to make sure you're getting that confidence to be on YouTube the right way, let's just jump into these mistakes that you might be doing or mistakes you can avoid on YouTube. So that first mistake is not planning your content. I know it may feel free for you to just turn your camera on and talk, but there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes here. For me before I even shoot this video for me, I'm not only researching the topics that I know my audience wants. I'm looking at my analytics to actually see if that's how YouTube is recommending me to people. I'm also looking at whether or not I've done this video before. How well did it perform, what did that audience retention look like so that I can make this video better for you? I'm also looking at audience retention graphs of those older videos, again to make this video better. And then I'm scripting out the content. I'm determining what where I'm going to be for each part of my video. I'm really working on making these videos more engaging to you. So I'm changing up where I'm at in the different scenes so I have a plan on when I'm standing up, when I'm sitting down, when I'm looking at my computer, and all of this. But you have to have that plan to be able to execute this without wanting to rip your hair out. The second mistake I see is not being consistent. And it's hard to be consistent if you don't have a plan in place. And when I'm talking consistency, I'm basically talking like one video a week. That's all you need to do, especially if you're using YouTube to drive leads to your business. If you're not focused on necessarily growing a massive YouTube following, you just want to get your content out there. You've just Got to show up consistently with your audience every single week to give them good content, to give them value so you can build that trust with them so that they'll want to get your opt in, hire you, buy whatever course you're selling or, or get them off of YouTube working with you. That third mistake that I see is again, people focusing over quality of videos, over quantity of videos. So you may hear people say, oh, you need to do videos daily, you need to do videos two times a week. But what is critical, especially when you're getting started on YouTube, is quality of content. Now that doesn't mean you have to hit like this 10 minute video mark either. You just want to be creating videos that, that your audience is watching. I talk about this a lot, but definitely looking at your audience retention graphs for each video and see if people are getting to the end of your video or are they all dropping off at the beginning or shortly thereafter. The quality of your content is what's going to signal to YouTube that it should recommend you to more people. So things like click through rates on your thumbnails and titles, audience retention, getting people to the end comments likes you getting people to click on your end screens. That is way more important in YouTube size than the amount of times you're posting every single week. Okay, now we're going to get a little controversial with this mistake I see people doing and it is focusing too much on tags, spending too much of your time trying to pick a keyword or tag that is searched perfectly. And competition is perfect so you can rank on search. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't work like that anymore. And what shows up on your search results for the exact same keyword is not, not the same that shows up on my search results anymore. What YouTube is taking into consideration is your watch history. So giving each viewer an individualized experience. So what shows up in your search isn't what's going to show up in my search. If my daughter watches my YouTube channel and watches Play Doh for an hour or two, my search is going to be totally different again. And so I don't want you to waste a lot of time trying to find like this perfect keyword that fits in this little box. I want you to use tags and keywords as kind of a topic research, see if people are even looking for this topic. And if it does have high competition out there, you could still beat the competition that's out there. If you can create a better video, you have a better click through rate with your title and thumbnail. If you get people to Watch your video longer. If you get people to comment and like all from your video, you could definitely beat the competition out there. But it's not because you're picking the perfect keywords and tags to be the competition, is because you're creating more quality or higher quality videos to beat the competition. Number five is perfection. And this can come in a variety of ways. This can be your need for perfection with what your background looks like, if you think you're perfect or not on video, what your video looks like, how good your editing is, how perfect your background is. But the key here is not letting perfection stop you from being on YouTube. Because your primary goal on YouTube is to help somebody, is to give somebody value. Whether you're a vlogging channel or an educational channel, I focus primarily here for channels for businesses to get more leads to their business. So if you want to grow your business by using YouTube, you have to just step out of your comfort zone. Stop worrying about whether or not you look good on camera, you have the perfect searched video ideas, whether your background is perfect, whether your equipment is perfect. And you just have to start creating videos because you're never going to get closer to perfection until you actually start doing it and tweaking it along the way. The next mistake is overthinking. And this specifically I'm talking about is at the very beginning of your YouTube journey, when you're trying to figure out a strategy, when you're mapping out like all of these video ideas and how they're going to connect to one another and are they the best optimized videos and are they going to drive you traffic? You got to get out of strategy mind when you start here on YouTube, because what you need to be focusing on is just creating videos. Make those mistakes, learn how to edit, learn where your equipment goes, figure out what your audience wants to see from you. Until you start thinking about strategy. You can start on YouTube with multiple different topics as long as it's leading viewers into your business. And then after about a month or two, you can start to see what videos are performing best on your channel, what your audience is resonating with, what YouTube is even recommending you for. And that can really help you kind of hone in on a niche that you want to take. If you're not really sure which niche you want to be doing here on YouTube, but you need to stop overthinking it and just start making videos. This next one is fair and guilty of this one. And it's playing the comparison game by playing the comparison Game. Your mistake here is you're never going to either create videos or get better at creating videos. Look, there may be somebody on YouTube doing the exact same thing you are. And you think, well, she's doing this, he's doing that. And you're constantly comparing yourself to each other. It's not healthy. It's not going to help you create better videos. It's not going to help you create any videos. And you have to stop comparing yourself to other channels. Along the line of comparison is maybe you see somebody doing the same thing you are and they're growing a lot faster than you. You think, I'm posting videos on YouTube, I'm doing all the right things. How is this channel growing twice the speed that I am? Well, you also need to understand we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. Maybe they have a team helping them. Maybe they're using YouTube ads, maybe they're using Facebook ads. Maybe they have some type of funnel in place. But you don't know what's going on behind the scenes. So you can't compare yourself to their journey. You're on your own YouTube journey. And so the biggest mistake that you can do on YouTube is compare your to somebody else's channel, somebody else's content, somebody else's growth, somebody else's YouTube journey. So I know it's hard. I've been there. You just got to put some blinders on and stop. The next mistake is not testing and experimenting with your channel. Look, I get it. You get into this system and you know it in this process. And you put the camera here and you put the lights here, and you say this and you say that and you add the text here. But if you're not seeing the success you would like to see on your channel, you've got to try something different. That's exactly a mistake I had fallen into. For a good part of 2019, I got pretty busy in my business and helping my clients channels that I didn't really test an experiment here on my channel. And I was like, I don't know why this channel isn't growing, but it's not a priority right now. But what I realized was I wasn't trying anything different. I wasn't switching things up. And so you see now in the past couple of weeks, I'm trying a different editing and filming style. I'm changing things up a bit, changing some different angles, because if you don't try something new, new, you're never going to know if it actually makes a change. So the biggest mistake that you can be making is just doing the same thing over and over and expecting a better result. Does that make sense? You keep doing it over and over, thinking you're going to get a different result when it's the same exact thing. So definitely consider testing something, whether that's not even your filming style. Maybe you're testing a different thumbnail or a different title, or just make a change somewhere. But when you do do this, make sure it's just one change at the at a time so you can actually tie that back to any kind of growth or changes you see in your channel. So let's say if you change your thumbnail, your title, your editing style, you just totally change your YouTube channel. You're not sure which piece of that actually helped you grow. All right, so just pick one thing for maybe a month and test and experiment with it. And then the next month try something different to test with. Like I said, that other mistake you can make is not changing up your titles and thumbnails. Look, if you're tracking your click through rates every single month for your videos, you're going to see, are you constantly hitting the same number over and over? Yeah. Again, for the better part of 2019 was a constant 3% click through rate. And I was like, well, I guess I'm just not going to get any better. But then I decided to take some time and test a different style and I got my click through rate up to 9%. So obviously if I wouldn't have tried something different, I would have kept getting the same result and I wouldn't have been getting more people to my videos. Because that click through rate is so important to not only get more views on your videos, but potentially new subscribers and getting YouTube recommending your content to more people. So don't forget to definitely try different types of thumbnails and titles. When I see most people starting out on YouTube, this is one of the big mistakes I see. And it's not really defining who your target audience is. And I know it can be scary. When you're getting started on YouTube, you want to create content that's going to potentially reach the masses. But what's really going to work on YouTube right now is focus focusing on who your target audience is. Who are you creating videos for? This is basically like defining your niche. So for example, anybody can watch my videos, but specifically I'm speaking to women business owners who are wanting to use YouTube to drive more leads to their business. So I know all of my content is going to revolve around that topic. I'm not going to be creating videos on how to grow a family vlog channel or how to grow a gaming channel or topics like that. I'm going to be focusing on what that female business owner is struggling with for not getting on YouTube. So maybe the confidence or the equipment and really knowing who your target audience is going to make content creation so much easier here on YouTube. And it's going to signal to YouTube who to recommend your content for. So if somebody is on YouTube searching for how to grow an email list or how to sell a course, they're going to know that product probably falls into my arena as well. So I could potentially get my videos served up to them in search or suggested when they are looking up topics like how to use YouTube in their business. This mistake is one that I struggled with as well, and it's not getting to the point quick enough in your videos and you can definitely tell whether or not that's happening to you and your audience retention graphs. So what I really want you to focus on to fix this mistake is making sure you're opening your video with a clear reason why that viewer should watch your video. You've got about two to five seconds for someone to determine whether or not they're going to watch your video. So whether you're giving them that best content upfront or giving them a reason why they need to watch, it's going to be really important. And then you want to minimize anything between that hook and the content. So you don't need to be creating like this bumper where there's this music in your logo and all this stuff going on that's basically like an advertisement stopping people from getting to your content. And you also really want to minimize the amount of time you take introducing yourself. So you'll see here on my channel I will say, hey, welcome back. My name is Trena. If you are new here on this channel and tell people what I do here on my channel and I get to that as soon as possible. Especially when you're Getting started on YouTube, just remember to kind of cut out that chit chat and get to the content really quick. Not promoting your videos is another mistake I see so many channels making and I know that we're thinking if we put it on YouTube, you know, people will find it. If you're just getting started on YouTube, you really need to get as many people to that video as possible. So use your other platforms as leverage. Tell your newsletter, tell your Instagram following. Tell your family and friends you have got to spend some time promoting that video to get the people that already love your content, who are there to support you watching it, to send signals to YouTube that, hey, this video is getting views, this video is getting comments. This video is getting people to come over from say, Instagram or Facebook. You really need to take some time promoting your videos if you want it to succeed. If you want to send those signals to YouTube. Okay, let's be real with each other. Hit the like button if you've made one or two of these mistakes because trust me, I've made all of them. And I want to know which mistake you're turning around right now. Let me know in the comments which mistake you are fixing. Like today, I more recently am working on testing more on my channel. That's the mistake I've made in the past and the mistake I'm working on fixing. I have three more YouTube no no's that I want to make sure you're not making. So click the video that's on your screen right now. I'll see you over in that video to make sure we've got your entire YouTube channel set up for success.