What Happens When Your YouTube Channel Isn't Growing?

Sometimes just posting to your channel every single week isn't going to grow your channel the way you hoped it would. So I'm going to show you real life examples of channels from members inside of my program Video strategy Academy who feel like they aren't growing as fast as they hope they would and give them suggestions on what they can do to get that channel growing again. The best part about this video is what I'm going to tell them to do is you could actually implement on your own channel as well. And honestly, I'd be surprised if you implement some of these suggestions that I have and you don't grow your channel in the next couple of weeks. Go ahead and hit that like button if you're ready to take your YouTube channel growth to that next level. And let's dive in. First up, we have Shanna. And when I asked Shanna specifically who is she targeting, she says, I'm a little unsure if I should be focusing on moms or running. My goal is to help moms women become runners and lose the weight for good. I'd like to provide one on one coaching services and eventually would like to discuss marathon running. So we understand. Okay. Shanna wants to target moms who are wanting to run to get healthy. When we look at her channel initially here, I don't see a lot of running. It says helping moms reach their fitness goals. And I do think this is pretty broad. It's not really telling me as a mom what am I going to get specifically out of this channel or maybe why should I follow this channel as opposed to any other fitness channel that's out there. So I think what Shanna could do is really get clear on her target audience because if she doesn't know who she's speaking to, YouTube's not going to know who to put her videos in front of either. But let's keep digging. The next thing we see right here is welcome to my channel. And it's a channel trailer that instantly plays when you land here. I think we're missing out on an opportunity here than just titling it. Welcome to my channel. You can maybe title it why I can get you to run in 30 days. And then you could pitch them, you know, why they should subscribe to your channel. I also go back and forth on really our channel trailers. Worth it. If you have a video that, you know, has, that, you know, has really good audience retention or it really helps you get more subscribers. I think that's probably more beneficial to have here as your channel trailer than an actually Dedicated channel trailer. The other thing here, when we play.

This, my personal trainer and an online fitness coach. I am a veteran.

I think that Shanna could do a little bit better being in the center of the frame. You can see how she's kind of misproportioned in the frame and there's a lot of empty space above her. There's also some feedback going on with her audio. It's kind of staticky, and that could cause people to not want to watch and kind of limit how professional you look on YouTube. So you really want to be thinking about how you look in the frame and also how you sound and audio, because those are two really big aspects on whether people are going to want to continue to see what you have on your channel. So as we scroll down here, we can see that Shanna's doing some great shorts. Some of these have had almost 200 views. But I'm not going to focus on shorts right now. Have my own opinion on shorts. We're going to go to her recent uploads. I do see that we don't have any channel sections here. And since we're missing out on these channel sections, we're also missing out on getting a highlight reel. So what are the types of content we can expect from Shanna? Almost like, what is the programming that we can get from Shanna? By not having these on your homepage, you really miss out on again, highlighting the benefits that somebody would have subscribing to your channel and coming back. Something you may want to think about is taking your playlists and really featuring them here on your homepage. Now, looking at Shanna's videos right here, I think the pink on the blue may be a little bit hard to read on these thumbnails. Also, that beginner is kind of squished together. I'm looking at it here on a desktop and it's kind of smushed together. I can only imagine what it looks like when it comes to. On mobile devices, you really want to make sure your thumbnails are clear. When people are scrolling through YouTube. One of the very first things that's going to stop them from scrolling is your thumbnail. And so it needs to really highlight what they're going to get out of your video. Let's take a look at more of Shanna's video. So let's pop over here to her videos. And we can see that she's recently shifted to this branding, but some of her videos were a little bit all over the place with branding. Something to keep in mind when you're creating your content. You want it to be easy for your audience to find your video. So if they happen to watch one or two of your videos and they haven't subscribed yet, but by branding consistently, they're going to be able to find your thumbnails. And so I can see Shanna has this pink and this blue and this other pink and this purple and this orange and this blue and this green. There's no kind of consistency for people to be like, oh, that's a Shanna video, or, oh, that was a great video from Shanna. There's another good one. So making sure your thumbnails have some type of consistency that tie in together. Now let's look at some of her more popular videos and see if we can figure out. Okay, some shorts of hers are doing great. That's fantastic. So this one 20 minute lower body workout with dumbbells, now, knowing she wants to target moms who want to run, this may not even be getting in front of the right target audience because nowhere here is this signaling to me that this is for me as a mom. Right. And so when you're creating content that's not clear for who your target audience is, it's going to confuse the algorithm on who to put your content in front of. So I would really think focusing on content specifically for your target audience. So if we go up in here to search, we even start typing in how to lose weight as a mom and we see what kind of topics that are showing up for this search. We can see five simple strategies to lose weight fast as a busy mom, how to lose weight fast for moms and women lose weight while breastfeeding. So you can see how these videos are really going to call out to that target audience. Right. It's going to really signal who this is for and who this isn't for. And when you're creating videos for YouTube, that's really what you want to do because that's helping the algorithm really understand who they should be putting your videos in front of. And if YouTube can understand who your target audience is, they can find more of those people. So when I asked Shanna, you know, who is her audience typically watching on YouTube, she mentions Glottie, Glow Body PT, and also Olivia Ostrom. So let's take a look at kind of the videos that they are doing. So if we go to Glow Body PT and we go to videos, we sort by her most popular videos, you can see we've got 8 minute best inner thigh workout. This is definitely targeting moms Diatasis is definitely targeting mom second and third trimester. Again, targeting moms. Prenatal arms targeting moms. Now, I don't necessarily think it's important for Shanna to get into, you know, prenatal, postnatal type videos, but I do think she could learn from this particular channel because she's making it very clear who her target audience is. Even if we go here to hot mommy cardio first and second trimester, you could do, you know, hot mommy cardio with your toddler beside you. Because I know when I work out, even with a five and a six year old, they are there. And so if you can give me some fun workout that they could do as well, that would definitely draw my attention. And then you could start to get kind of categorized here with Glow Body pt, if that's who your audience is watching. But you've got to be clear on who your audience is watching. Again, taking a look at what she's featuring here in her thumbnails too. Now her thumbnails, these are a little bit older videos. If we sort by her more recent videos, you're going to see that she is definitely featuring a lot of pregnancy type videos. And so this may be for pre and postnatal specifically. If that's who Shanna wants to target, then I would say this is a good channel to look at. But if that's not her target audience, then I would go to YouTube and start to find those channels. Specifically, her audience would be watching. And what videos over there are performing well? What topics are performing well? She also mentioned Olivia Ostrom. So this says fitness mama, lifestyles videos every week. Now this already, from what I'm seeing, is more of a lifestyle channel with fitness as a piece of the content. And so if Shanna wanted to reach this audience, I think again, she's going to have to branch out from just running. And that's not necessarily what she wants because she's building a business to help women start running. There's one on one coaching clients for running. So I think being able to really nail down who on YouTube these people are watching and what is the content that they're responding to. Okay, if we go back to Shanna's videos one more time, I do want to talk about her recent videos and we're going to look at this one.

Are you struggling to lose weight? You've been trying to lose weight, but your weight has been fluctuating up and down. Hi, I'm Shanna, a NASM certified to discuss six tips that can help you with weight loss. Tip number one, make a plan when.

You So I always talk about having a hook in that video and you can hear what Shanna's hook was. But I think it could be a little bit more personal to moms and maybe a little more conversational. I feel like this title is probably a little too SEO or keyword stuffed and not really value proposed. Right. So how to Lose Weight Without Dieting. Six easy tips to try. Now, again, who is this video for? What value am I going to get out of this? If I search how to Lose Weight Without Dieting, there's gonna be a butt ton of videos. But what specifically about what I'm gonna teach is unique or why should you watch mine? And so you really want to make sure that that title features that and then you continue telling why your unique approach is what they need to watch in that hook. So I may open that video by saying, look, as a mom, we are running around feeding our kids. We are taking them to preschool. It can be very hard to diet we when you're taking care of other people. But I've actually got six easy tips. Even if you have a to do list a mile long that can still help you lose weight without focusing on dieting. Right. That's going to. That's going to get that person more pulled in to hear what you having to hear what you have to say instead of just saying, have you been struggling to lose weight? Have you been trying to lose weight? Probably. We all are. But really tie into that real struggle that they're having the kid piece of it. Right. I also think that Shanna could do a little bit more loosening up. I know it's hard on video. I've had a hard time finding my place on video as well. But we are talking to moms and I hear your kid in the background. And that's a really great opportunity for you to connect with your audience and say, yeah, you probably hear my child in the background. I'm just like you. I'm trying to balance all the different things I got to get done today. So don't mind her while she's back there playing. That really opens you up for that connection with your audience and that explains your kids talking. One more thing that I'm going to mention to Shanna, which may help you as well. If you're trying to level up. Your channel is audio again. Now, I noticed she's in a bigger room and echoing can be an issue. This is where you probably need to look at getting a lavalier mic or A specific mic for your camera. Sometimes just the mic on your cell phone isn't going to be a good enough quality in a large room like this. And audio can really affect whether people are going listen to your whole video or not. So those are some things that I would really consider Shanna to look at when she wants to grow her channel. You've really got to understand who your target audience is, because if you don't know who your target audience is, you don't know what kind of content you should be creating for YouTube so that YouTube knows who your target audience is. Next, I want to look at Britney, who is targeting specifically math teachers and upper elementary. And now Britney is a very colorful, very, very, very bright channel here. Let's talk math and upper elementary. I think this is a great banner. We understand what we're going to get here. Now, when I asked Brittany the question, who is her target audience watching on YouTube? She actually said she doesn't feel like she has any direct competitors on YouTube. Now, that could be a problem because if you don't know who your audience is watching, who are you going to know who to align yourself with or cluster yourself with? Because if you know who audience is watching and you can create similar content, YouTube will know to cluster you together and recommend you to people watching your competitors. Okay. She did mention there are two other teacher channels that she has found, so Pocket Full of Primary and also Susan Jones. So those are ones we're going to look at here. The first thing that I want to look at here with Britney is again, her branding is very bright, but. But it's not consistent. So I see her consistency in her thumbnails with her there. But we've got green, we've got yellow, we've got pink, we've got blue, we've got orange. We need to keep some kind of consistency with the branding. So again, people recognize your thumbnails immediately. Now, one other thing I see standing out is this particular video. It has the exact same title as it does thumbnail. And we don't want to repeat our title on our thumbnails because people can read our title. We really want to feature what is the benefit or what are they going to get out of this video visually in the thumbnails and use text as little as possible. And so maybe she can really feature these images, these tools in the thumbnail and not really need text. Right. Because again, you want to show what the outcome of this video is with your thumbnail and then have the title to support that. Now, when we look Here we see she does have sections here on her homepage, but I would really recommend instead of just categorizing these, how can we pitch value for people to watch? So problem solving, how can we shift that a little bit differently? Instead of just as a category but something that would cause them to want to watch more than one video, how can we pitch this as like a series of videos? What is the outcome they're going to get out of watching more than one? So she has two here and three here. So maybe everything you need to know about math manipulatives, right? And that could get people to watch more than one video here because she's talking about four myths, must haves and how to teach. Right? Because these playlists could also show up in search and suggested and if the title isn't really click worthy, people aren't going to click on it and you're going to miss out on a huge opportunity. Now when I watch one of Britney's videos, if you are in our upper elementary math teacher space, I think she has great video quality, I think she has a very great camera personality. I think she may want to pull people in a little bit there in the beginning instead of saying hey math friends, maybe continuing why they should keep watching this video. They clicked on this video for the title, but why should they keep watching? Now here's the important part. How are we going to drive more people to her channel? Because one thing we need to get more consistent here. She's posting one five days ago, a month ago, nine months. So getting back on that consistency train at least one a week but figuring out what her audience is watching so she can get in front of them. So like I said, she mentioned pocket full of primary and if we go here to her videos and we sort by most popular to see what her audience is watching, we really want to see what kind of recent videos went big on her channel. So you can see we have two years, three years. So here's one from a year ago that went big. Obviously distance learning was huge. But how could possibly Britney talk about seven best websites and apps for distance learning when it comes to math, right? How could she pull that topic into math? Because people that may be watching this, maybe those math teachers and so she could potentially show up from if somebody watches this video, she could potentially show up and suggested to get traffic or let's say somebody watches this, then Britney could have her videos maybe show up on those people's homepages. Another thing that we can do is look at her most recent videos and see if anything went bigger than normal. Right. We can see the average video views for her are about say 12k ish. We 26, 24. So we're looking for anything that's bigger than normal. So right here, 37,000 views. How to create an effective schedule as a teacher. So how can Britney position this for her expertise? Right, she's talking about math. So how to create an effective math schedule as a teacher could be a great opportunity for her. So that again, if her audience is watching Pocketful Primary, which is talking to primary teachers, that could allow her to open up to a new audience. Now she also mentioned Susan Jones. Again, we would do the same thing. Over here we will look at Susan's most recent videos and see if anything particularly blew up any topics. So we can see this one is really big. 19,000 views. How to teach Silent eat at kindergarten. That may not just work for Britney. So we're going to go back to the drawing board. Okay, now we can see that Susan is teaching tips and ideas and activities, but it's looking more towards vocabulary. So this is going to be really important. If you want to grow on YouTube, you need to make sure you're getting your channel clustered with other channels your target audience is watching. And then you want to make sure you're creating that content that is going to get their attention. Now, I recently released a video where I deep dive into exactly what my YouTube strategy is going to be for 2022. And the things that I'm doing right to grow my channel. Make sure you click that video that's on your screen right now because I'm exposing my YouTube strategy for 2022.