I want to share with you my YouTube growth strategy. What I'm going to do—
this is going to be a long video—is walk you through where I am today, why do I
want to grow, how do I grow, and then some specifics around how YouTube fits in with
my entire business. I have had a YouTube channel since 2013 had 137,000
views which is really amazing. That's really
wonderful but notice that nearly 100,000 of those have been in
the last month. My YouTube channel was completely a ghost town for five, six
years, not because I wasn't posting videos but because I was not getting any
views. I really didn't take YouTube seriously. I tried a few times but I'm
just looking at the analytics now. The lifetime view, so this is ever since my
channel started you can see way back in 2013.
I posted videos at different times— nine videos here—but I didn't really get
anything, up until I got up to just recently. So let me just switch here to
the last 90 days. So I'm recording this early May in 2020 and you can see in the
last 90 days like nothing happened on my YouTube channel until I got to March
2020. It's now mine early May and then you can see there's been an explosion in
growth. Those dips are always weekends which is very interesting for my
particular audience. So, what I'm going to walk you through here is where I am
today. Why do I want to grow? (This is really, really important!) And then, of
course, how do I grow? And then a call to action; how is this going to fit in with
the rest of my business? So, I'll expand each of those as I go. Let me jump back
here. So that's the last 90 days. The last 28 days. So you can see that
I've had a 100,000 views in the last 30 days [28 days] and I've got 340
subscribers. Why is that important? Let's jump back to
where I am. Quick summary here so channel is seven years old, I've got a
143 videos. Now, you might think "wow! Like that's a lot of
videos!" In fact, I deleted quite a few videos, maybe 50 videos in the last week
or two because they were simply not performing or they were off-brand. And
that's a normal thing that you do when you are starting, when you're running a
YouTube channel. You try a few different things. I had some fun videos in there. I
had some videos that were more technical stuff. There were some that were just
either not performing or they weren't attracting the right kind of audience. In
most cases, they weren't attracting an audience at all, and even though I've got
143 videos, at least probably 20 or 30 of those are unlisted which means they're
not going to turn up in a YouTube search. I'm just going to show you
total watch hours and the number of subscribers. I'm really interested in the
last 365 days—the last year—and here's why. Watch hours. So if you want to
monetize your channel—and I'm going to speak about that—if you want to monetize
your channel and become a YouTube partner you need to have 4,000 public
watch hours in the last 12 months, so never mind what happened before then. And
you need to get 1000 subscribers. Now, you can see that I've had 2,500
public watch hours so I'm well on the way there
even in the last month. Most of that came in the last month and I'm well on the
way there. Now that doesn't mean that I've recorded a lot of 10 to 15 minute
videos. Not at all! In fact, most of those watch hours came from a single video. And
then 339 or 340 subscribers so I need to get a thousand subs by the looks of
things I'm going to get to my watch hours I'll show you what that means
focus for me right now for monetization is subscribers so watch
hours is really the amount of time that anybody watches some of your videos
obviously if you've got a longer video and they watch more of it that's good
but if you've got a longer video and they click away or they don't even watch
it in the first place that's bad you can do this with even with really short
videos let me show you you can build up your watch hour so look at this one here
it's have a quick look at the analytics of this video and you can see that this
video single video that goes to 96 seconds 1 minute 36 is responsible for
875 hours of watch time now you might think wow that must be an amazing video
no it's actually not it's actually got really poor lighting even the audio
switches from two channels to one and then it's really obvious but it's solved
which is when people log on to zoom they don't want to go on camera how do I turn
off the camera and that's given me 59 subscribers that's pretty pretty handy
as well sixty-five thousand years now I've never had this kind of audience
before you can see even now even as we're watching now
these are people so it's 9:00 a.m. here in Sydney there are people watching now
14 people have watched in the last night 14 minutes 24 minutes so basically one a
minute and you're seeing also that the video itself even though goes to 90
seconds on average people watch half of it you might sort of say well what's
happening at half time that people are dropping you know that includes people
who just watch it for five seconds and then others who watch it all the way
through there are some things that I could certainly improve on the video why
we want one jump too much into the analytics at this point I just wanted to
show you that a single video that was really short can be enough to build up
your watch hours a lot let's jump back into my strategy here so you can see
I've got 2600 watch hours and 340 subscribers remember I want to aim for a
thousand subscribers but monetization is not my only goal why do I want to grow
I've got a tiny goal I've got the monetization goal so that means that I
can actually switch ads on to my YouTube channel and in order to do that as you
saw I've got to get 4,000 hours of watch time and I've got to get a thousand
subscribers those watch how is that what we call public watch hours which means
videos that are available for everybody not unlisted videos which are just
available for people who've got the link nor no private videos I could go for my
monetization yeah I want to get to a thousand subscribers but at the moment
I'm at three hundred and forty and so a thousand seemed is quite a long way away
from me so I'm gonna have a tiny goal here which is I'm going to get to 500
subscribers the last two weeks or so I've gotten in seventeen seventy two
subscribers in the last week actually I've got about 70 subscribers if I've
got to get from 340 to 500 that looks very achievable and then from 500 then
I'll worry about the next level which is 700 subscribers 750 or a thousand but in
that tiny goal the monetize that look the money itself is not going to be
that big look it's nice as welcome if I get a check every every month from
YouTube but it's still unpredictable my channel could go out of fashion but what
I really really want to focus on is how is these as stepping stones to business
right what businesses or business isn't a Maitai how do I grow I really need to
have a theme for my channel and the reason that I deleted so many of those
older videos is that they were off-brand my content pretty much had really four
or five things so one was productivity not so much around time management not
so much around he's had a time box yourself and make sure that you're
really efficient during the day more around how to manage your energy so that
you don't start doing tasks that cause you to procrastinate that you really
don't know what even while you're doing them I suppose that's productivity
another ones were technical how-to such as my my zoom video here's how to hit
the stop video button other ones are more around the general kind of
motivation believing you can do it that kind of thing some more tactical ones
and strategy around pricing your services especially if you are running
your own service business and this last one were interviews that I did where
which was really helpful content for people who wanted to know a little bit
more about me so somebody has interviewed me and I'm a posted that up
on to my YouTube channel all of these except for this one all come in under
one thing which is confidence in your business the productivity one is around
what is draining you is usually because you don't have clarity about what it is
that you're supposed to be working on and you don't have confidence that you
can even do it what I really like to do is have a GPS to say here's where you
are and here's where you're going I'm gonna join those dots the next one is
the technical how-to stuff a lot of people use technical I don't know how to
do it as an excuse because they're not really clear about why they're doing it
why they have to do it in the first place simple example I want to build my
youtube channel well why well they're not really sure and if you're not clear
about your YouTube channel while you're doing it if you're saying it's just for
monetization and that's your only motive then it may not be enough it probably
won't be enough to keep you going pricing once again how much do I charge
how can I be sure how much to charge and so that also comes in pretty much under
confidence and so all of these are underlying themes the interview is less
so typically I'm just posting them and I'm going to make them unlisted videos I
don't really care if they turn up in the youtube search but they're more likely
to be things that somebody who has interviewed me is going to share on
LinkedIn or something like that so these ones are going to stay as unlisted
videos so I have a few things to do that are really one-off jobs one of them is
to improve my YouTube banner I do have a banner that I've just put in place it's
not outstanding in terms of design but at least it's got business confidence
and it's got my photo my name so so this is good one of the ones so the banner
the thumbnails now you might say well thumbnails are not a one-off improvement
that they are because I need to go back through my old videos and really tidy up
those thumbnails look here at some of some of my old videos that you'll see
that those thumbnails some of the thumbnails are fairly fairly ordinary
and the text is a little bit hard to read they're not that interesting so you
can see that some of those thumbnails really need some work right so I'm going
to organize the channel along the whole play lifts idea around the themes of the
channel and so the reason I'm doing that is just to make it easy that for the
different people who are coming for different reasons it easy for them to
say ok I'm coming for this how-to video just makes the channel a bit more
friendly a bit more neat and organized now the Welcome video as well so I've
got a welcome video for those who are subscribers and those who are not
subscribers and so they'll welcome to the ones who are subscribers is you know
for them to welcome them back that's far too long that video I'm also thinking of
changing those videos fairly regularly rather than having an old video that is
it just goes out of date I think and I think it's a bit of a turn-off when you
have a video that is like a year old or even longer a welcome video especially
if you're changing your positioning or what it is that you're talking about so
those are one-off improvements that I'm going to make and now there are also
some improvements that I need to continually grow in and that's things
like learning how to do those thumbnails myself so that I can improve them my
video editing picking the right titles so my videos themselves are going to
attract especially in the youtube search same with the the descriptions and the
keywords and tags on video so I'm using the tube buddy the free version of tube
buddy the Chrome extension which tells me what tags I have for my channel
itself and also makes some suggestions for tags for when I post a video so that
can be very very helpful a couple of other things that I need to point out to
you is that when I do learn those skills sometimes it makes sense for me to teach
it to you as well in other words to use it not just as a learning experience for
myself but also as valuable content for you as a viewer or as a potential
subscriber and the reason that or an existing subscriber that knowledge is
going to sink in for me it means that I'm implementing it but I'm also
teaching you now for some things that makes total sense because it's something
that is maybe I'm going to have a different angle about how I do it I'm
going to be bringing certain expertise on the technical side that I can bring
and maybe I can break it down in ways that other people don't do for other
things it totally doesn't make sense for me to go and create videos for me to
create videos about my thumbnails I don't expect my thumbnails ever to get
to a stage where they're gonna be really outstanding and so it doesn't make sense
for me to be creating more videos there are so many good videos out there about
how to create thumbnails so that's not an area that I know that I'm going to
share content and and with the editing yeah probably I
will I'll show you a few of the things that I'm doing in terms of editing as a
baby youtuber which I am right of a small youtuber now a couple of other
things that I need to point out is the call to action for my videos at the
moment is well obviously I like you to like the video maybe comment as well I
try to respond to every comment but I also of course want you to subscribe to
the channel because remember my big goal here or my little Gama medium-size goal
is to get to a thousand subscribers and where I am at the moment is the number
of subscribers is I have got is 340 so I'm about a third of the way there now
what I'm trying to do however is I'm not just looking to more subscribers for my
youtube channel so that I can monetize and so on I really I want to share my
content but YouTube is only part of a much bigger strategy so that people who
are following me may not ever want to become youtubers themselves and that's
not really my ambition to become like a full-time youtuber or anything but
really how does video or how does my advice about pricing for example fit in
with their business and that's really what I want to focus and so my business
goal is bigger than my youtube call-to-action at the moment I don't
have anything in here at the moment that's the kind of the last commitment
that I want from you is just to subscribe to my YouTube channel and to
keep watching my videos the aim is is ideally is to get you on my email list
maybe even to jump on a call with me if you think that you're a good fit or to
work out if we're a good fit for my business coaching perhaps you can go to
my website listen to my podcast buy my ebook and so on there's a whole lot of
other things that are beyond YouTube which is why it makes it make sense for
me to share my youtube strategy as part of a bigger business strategy so there
it is that's where I am with the whole YouTube channel building the channel
growth at the I hope that this is helpful for you if
you haven't subscribed yet you know what to do yep hit that subscribe button and
that will give me some incentive to keep going to keep creating content which
will hopefully help you to grow your business and to get more confident as a
business owner thanks again for watching I'm Anthony English that subscribe
button again