Why the YouTube Algorithm is keeping your small channel from growing

New and small YouTube channels are not treated the same as big YouTube channels. I mean, just think about it, Think about the most successful channels in your niche. Does it seem like they keep getting views on their videos consistently while after you publish yours, it's like a day or two and it kind of dies off? Yeah, that happens because just like in business, you need to build credibility here on YouTube and you need to give YouTube proof that you're basically good. So the channels that have been on YouTube a while or who have grown an audience quickly and have people coming back watching video after video, binge watching their content has proven to YouTube that if YouTube puts their videos on the homepage and in front of people, it's going to do what YouTube wants it to do. Click on it, watch it, watch more content. Taking a gamble with a new YouTube channel or a smaller YouTube channel that's not been consistent, that the click through rates aren't always that great, that the audience retention isn't the best, is not a gamble that YouTube is willing to take. So not every video on YouTube has the same chance. But this doesn't mean there's no hope for you yet, especially if you're a business owner using YouTube to generate leads, to generate sales, to get clients. Because I've had quite a few clients in 2024 start YouTube channels from scratch and see amazing results. I've had a client start gain over 51,000 views in just under 1,000 subscribers in one year. And that's not including the amount of people that that has sent to her membership and have purchased and join her membership. I have another client who has gained over 140,000 views and over 5,000 subscribers. Again, that's just on YouTube. That's not including the sales that she has made from those views. And another client gained 530,000 views and over 11,000 subscribers in one month. Just getting started. Again, not accounting for the money she's made from the viewers watching her videos to buying in her business. In addition to sales, they're seeing consistent email signups, clients reaching out to them saying they watch their videos on YouTube and making sales every day from their digital products because of the views and the audience that they are getting from their YouTube content, all is not lost. If you're planning to start a YouTube channel in 2025 or you're trying to grow your small YouTube channel, here's the first thing that you're going to need to focus on if you want to start seeing better results on your channel. Viewer engagement, viewer watch time and viewer Session time. All right, this one is really missed a lot. When people are talking about YouTube strategy, here's what you need to do. All right, you need to commit to showing up consistently. Ideally, you want to commit to posting every single week. Now, if you can do two a week, obviously that's going to gain you some more momentum, some more views, opportunities for people to find your content twice the amount of time in one week. But you need to commit to consistency when it comes to engagement. You need to be tying in engagement pieces into your videos and not just saying like, subscribe and comment. If people are engaging in your video, that sends signals to YouTube that, hey, this is a good video. Let's recommend it to more people. Are people liking it? Are people commenting on it? Now, I dive into how to actually get engagement in comments without saying like subscribe and comment in this particular video, where I dive into how I plan my videos for engagement. But this is something that you will need to focus on if you want YouTube to push your videos to more people. I mentioned watch time. This is something that you're going to need to focus on. And the best way to figure out, is your video actually good? Are people watching your videos? Is your audience retention graph. So when you post a video, one of the things that you should be looking at a few days later when there's enough data from YouTube is your audience retention graph. How many people were still watching your video in the first 30 seconds? If you've lost over 50% of people in the first 30 seconds, you have to fix that. YouTube is not going to push that content to more people. You want to make your audience retention graph as flat as possible. So studying these, figuring out where are you talking too long? What pieces do you see start to gradually decline? What are you doing there that you can tie up? You can also look at the good ones too. Which videos had more people watching in the first 30 seconds? That's telling you that's a good hook. Replicate that. Which videos have the more straighter audience retention graph? How are you delivering your content there? This is how you're going to get YouTube to push your videos in front of more people. If you can prove to YouTube, if they put it in front of people, people will actually watch it. Now, I mentioned session time and I said not many people talk about this and this is so important. In fact, it is a key feature to the strategy I teach my clients and it's creating bingeable videos. Now, the way I teach my clients to create bingeable videos is we create YouTube playlist funnels. I will link to a video where I dive deep into YouTube playlist funnels. We're not going to talk about this video, but it will be deep dive in this video here. YouTube playlist funnels are basically five videos that lead into each other. This is how you're going to extend session time. So if YouTube sees video two in this five video series gets people to watch video three, four, and five, guess what YouTube is going to do? Push video two to more people. Because YouTube says, hey, if people watch video two, they're watching three more videos. Let's push video two to more people. Now, I mentioned this playlist funnel. The way this works is you need to be planning these five videos, knowing which video you're telling them to watch next. So when you film video 2 and you plan video 2, you are telling them to watch video 3. And when you're planning and filming video 3, you are telling them to watch Video 4. This is going to be the best, biggest thing that you can do on your channel to see the best results by creating this binge session. Because the more people you can get to watch your content, the better YouTube will understand the best people for your channel. So if you are getting more people to watch your videos, YouTube says, oh, this is the person that just watched five videos on her channel. I know a few more people like this. And if YouTube puts that video in front of five more people and let's say four of them end up binge watching, YouTube goes, oh, okay, I know more people like those four people. Now YouTube puts it in front of 40 people and let's say 30 of those watch your videos. Now. YouTube is really starting to refine and understand who your audience is. So it can really start to nail down who is going to be best for your videos. And when YouTube can do that, that's when the snowball effect just starts to happen. Because as you post new content, YouTube's going to put that new content in front of more of the right people. And those people are going to start to see older videos of yours as well. If you're getting them to click and your audience retention is good and it's creating binge sessions. The reason why we don't need to worry so much about how many subscribers we have is because of how the algorithm works. If you can get people to watch more than one of your videos, the algorithm will then put your video in front of them more often, even if they aren't subscribed. In fact, there are people that I'm subscribed to. I don't even see see their videos on my homepage anymore because it's not the content that I'm consistently watching. I'm watching the videos that YouTube thinks I'm going to watch, and that's what's on my homepage. The second thing that you need to focus on here is understanding your audience or your niche. And a lot of people get this niche thing wrong. The first way they get this wrong is they think if they niche down, they can only talk about this one topic in this one topic only. So let's say like $10 meals. And now all I can only ever talk about is $10 meals or two. They think they can talk about whatever they want and they're posting whatever videos they feel like. And it's not really honed in on a specific person. You need to be clear about the audience you're speaking to. So my YouTube coaching experience clients, they know this as their ready to buy viewer. Who is that person right before they decide to work with them or buy from them? Who are they? What are they watching? What are the problems that they are having that they're searching for on YouTube? So I talk a lot about YouTube strategy for business owners, right? But is YouTube the only thing that I'm ever going to talk about here on my channel? Absolutely not. Because y' all get bored and be like, good grief, she's done another video on how to plan a video, or she's done another video on how to grow your channel, you'd get bored. But because I know you are probably a course creator, a coach, your online business owner, there are other topics I can create for you, like planning videos, quarterly planning videos, weekly planning videos, videos of unlaunching, how to launch, types of launches, how I build my funnels, what my funnels look like, how I edit my videos. In fact, if any of this sound interesting and you have some topics that you would like me to dive into more in 2025, please put your request down in the comments because I am open for all the requests. And you can actually see in your analytics, is your current audience getting bored? You can see when you post videos, is your current subscribers watching this or new subscribers? Let me show you how to find that. You want to go into a specific video. So let's go into a video that has a little bit more data. This is my last week's video. When you come into the analytics, you want to go to your audience and see, okay, my returning viewers came to this video because it's that Purple line. But I didn't get new viewers from this video. So this did a good job of keeping my current viewers happy, but it didn't do a good job of driving new people to my channel. Now if we look at a video that I did recently that drove a lot of new people to my channel, this particular video, when we look at the audience, it went way above average. And that's because initially my built in viewers, my returning viewers were loving it and watching it. So YouTube says, I bet there are some more people like this that would enjoy this video too. So it sent it out to way more people and it really helped me grow my audience. You can see on just Friday, November 29, February, 15,000 new people saw it and it did grow me over 500 subscribers. And about what is that a two week time period? So that's how you can check. Is the content that you're creating helping you get in front of new people? And are you keeping your current audience satisfied with your content? The third thing that you need to do as a small channel to see growth in 2025 is look at your content objectively or get somebody else to look at it. Just posting videos does not mean you're going to grow your channel. And just posting videos does not mean you're doing it well. You need to be looking at your click through rate and figuring out why your click through rate isn't a 4, 5, 6, 7% or above. Because if it's a low click through rate, YouTube's just not going to put it in front of people. Why is it going to take up real estate on a video that people aren't clicking on? YouTube is going to put videos that people are clicking on on the homepage. You also need to look at your audience retention to be objective. Is your content actually good? Because remember, if your audience ret is tanking, why is YouTube going to put that video in front of people? People aren't watching it, so it's not a good viewer experience. So YouTube's going to bury your content again. You've got to be creating a routine to look at these metrics consistently. And this is exactly what I do with my clients inside a YouTube coaching experience. I'm looking at their entire channel analytics as well as individual video performance weekly, sometimes daily. And I'm analyzing, what are they doing? Well, what do they need to stop doing? I'm analyzing, do we need to do a title change? Do we need to do thumbnail change? Here's my recommendation on how we change the thumbnail to get the click through rate up to keep the video going. Do we need to change the way you're introducing your video? Your hook? Let's look at the hook for your next video and how can we tweak that in the planning phase before you record it so we know you have a better audience retention graph? It's the outside perspective that will help you see why your videos aren't getting the momentum, aren't getting the views, and is the reason why your channel feels like it's not growing at all. And this is going to keep your channel small and it's really going to hold you back from your potential. If you're looking to have a strategist in your back pocket, that's exactly what I am for my clients inside of the YouTube coaching experience, you can join us today. I can be looking at your channel as quickly as 24 hours from now. Go to trina little.com forward/coaching enjoy my program to have me in your back pocket to be looking at your channel and your videos to see how you can improve, to continue to reach more people that will buy your products, work with you one on one that will get on your email list. The next important thing you need to know as a business owner on YouTube is every single video you post should be making you money in your business. And if it's not, even with minimal views on your video, watch this video on your screen right now to see how you can fix that asap.