Hi guys, today I'm going to share some tips and tricks with you on how to be a successful,
"Mommy YouTuber." These are just things that I've done to grow my channel. I've actually
had my channel for nearly two years, I have 6,000 subscribers now, and I really feel like
it's started to pick up in the last six months. And I think maybe it is because I've changed
a few things, and also used to kind of gain momentum. So, I've written down what I do
and some of them might be useful for you mommy vloggers out there. I obviously say in the
title of this video, "Successful Mommy Vlogger," loosely, because I wouldn't say I'm successful
or big or anything like that yet, but that is the aim and these are things that I do.
And I think that when I started out as a mommy vlogger I would have found these tips quite
useful, because I've kind of learnt these things over the past two years. Here we go.
First and foremost I would make videos that you want to make that you enjoy making and
that you would also want to watch. I make helpful tip videos for moms, haul videos,
beauty videos, anything that interests me really. And then I also make day in the life
of videos and week in the life of videos. The day in the life of videos and those kind
of vlogging videos I really do because I want to remember those memories myself. So, sometimes
I'll vlog a weekend, or our Disney trip, or things like that, because I think that'll
be really cool to have in the future. I don't know those videos gain me loads of subscribers
or anything, I think that I get most of my subscribers from my helpful videos.
If you can put yourself in mommy's shoes, which you probably are a mom, so that's not
hard to do, what I do sometimes is write a list of topics or things that would interest
me, things that I personally would sit down on YouTube and search for and go, "Teething
tips," or at the moment in my life it's like how do I potty train a child. Things like
that. So, if you can write down things that would interest you in your life and that maybe
you have some knowledge or past experience on, then you can do a video on that and other
moms will hopefully like your tips and related to you.
My biggest ever videos have been how to entertain a baby, because there's lots of moms at home
with a six month old baby that you don't know what to do with them. So, having had two children,
I did that video and that has been one of my biggest ones. My next biggest ones have
been weaning videos. So literally just videos of what I feed my children, because I personally
love watching those videos. We run out of ideas, don't we at home? We stick to our staple
dinners and we don't think about other things. But those kind of videos can be really helpful.
My next tip is to be consistent. And I know a lot of other YouTubers would say the same
thing, but as long as you're constantly putting out content then your audience will respect
you and they'll come back and they'll come back to check it out. In the beginning if
you can only be consistent in terms of one video every two weeks, or what I started doing
was one video every week, because I was still getting to grips with how to film, how to
edit, how to upload, all of those things. Now I try my very hardest to upload two to
three videos a week. Ideally you would be able to say I'm going to upload at six o'clock
on a Monday, on a Wednesday, on a Friday. As a mom I find that really hard, and I haven't
published a time, just because you never know what's going to happen in my life. And I just
feel like that would be the best case scenario, if you could actually say a date and a time
people would love that, but unfortunately I feel at this stage with two little ones
and working and I'm pregnant and all that stuff it's something that I can't do just
yet. My next tip is to engage with your audience.
And since I started taking that seriously I feel like my subscribers have really started
to grow. So, by engaging I mean responding to every comment that you get on every video.
Being part of the community and watching and using YouTube yourself. And every YouTube
video that you do watch, make sure you comment on it. Not just like, "Love the video," but
something that you actually like, "Oh wow, I really liked your perspective on blah,"
or an actual thing. Because I know for sure that I have got subscribers from commenting
on other videos. I've had subscribers in the past come to my
channel and say, "Hi, I saw your comment on blah blah's video. Thought I'd come over and
say hi and watch your videos." So it's all just about being in this big social networking
community, so be part of it. If people have taken 10 minutes out of a mom's day is massive.
If they have taken 10 minutes out of their day to watch your video and then not only
watch it, they have then taken the time to comment, I think the least that you can do
is comment back. And I always like to use their name, I like to say, "Thank you so much
Lucy for watching, really appreciate it." And I also like to ask people questions, if
they're like, "Hi, with love from New Zealand." And I'm like, "Oh my gosh I love New Zealand,
where are you rom?" And you're kind of building up that relationship with people.
And it's just so important to engage and I kind of feel like it's the least we can do.
Managing and prioritizing your time is another big one. It's really hard as a mom to juggle
everything. What I do is on my two days off with my youngest, my eldest is at school,
so when my youngest goes down for a nap I film a video. So, I need to be prepared for
that golden hour of when I can film a video. I'll prepare what I want to say maybe the
night before, I'll think of a bit of a rough script or think about what I'm going to show
if it's a haul video, et cetera. So, jut get ready, plan your time or get your husband,
like at the moment my husband has the kids for an hour while I film this video on a Sunday.
So, It's just really about prioritizing your time so that's how I film my videos. And then
I always edit my videos at night. That might sound like work to some people,
but for me it is really just a hobby and I absolutely love learning the technical side
of it and editing my videos that way. But I find that I can't edit my videos when the
children are awake, it's impossible, so I always do it when they're asleep.
My next tip is to be completely honest. Viewers will see through you if you try to be a bit
of an actress at the beginning, which I know I watch some of my older videos and I think
god I'm the worst actress, I don't know why I was trying to be that sort of way. People
just completely see through you straight away, and people really lie honesty because on YouTube
it's one place where you can be honest. TV shows, films and stuff like that, people aren't
always honest, it's a show. But us, we're real, we're honest people, this is real life.
And people really appreciate that, and they will see straight through you if you aren't
honest. So, don't talk about bottle feeding if you breastfed. Don't talk about things
that you don't believe in. Another tip that is so simple and easy to
get right, but I watch so many videos of people that get it wrong, is lighting. All I do is
I sit in front of these big windows that we have in our house, which is probably why I
always sit here, but you can also buy [inaudible 00:06:52] lights if you live in a darker part
of the country, or if you're filming in the winter or in the evening if that's the only
time you can film. But lighting is so important, it can make a massive difference on your videos.
Edit as well as you can. You do not have to be a professional editor, but some of the
content on YouTube now is so good we do all need to up our game. So, what I've done in
the past is watch YouTube video tutorials. Oh, Caleb.
Right, I told you it was real life, Caleb's just woken up from a nap, so what I was saying
was in the beginning I used a lot of YouTube tutorials on how to edit my videos. I use
something called Final Cut Pro now, but to start out with I just used Movie Maker, really,
really simple. And I keep my editing quite simple, it's something I would like to improve
over time. But you do naturally learn things and I think you definitely learn more by doing
and not by just thinking about it. So, if you're thinking about starting a channel,
definitely just start. Next tip is to take time on your thumbnails.
It can take like an extra five minutes when you're uploading your video, but it's so worth
it, makes such a difference to market your videos. And making your thumbnails look more
professional will make a massive difference in how much people are actually going to click
on your videos. I use Pic [inaudible 00:08:08] to do my thumbnails. If you would like to
see a separate tutorial on that I'm happy to show you, but there are actually loads
on YouTube already, so you can go and have a look at that. But thumbnails are really
important, as well as your tags, make sure that you tag your videos with keywords. What
I do is when I make a video I'll go on to Google and I'll start searching what I would
search if I wanted to find out about weaning, or something like that. And I'd look at what
phrases just pop-up on Google themselves. And sometimes you'd be really surprised. The
other day I put up a video about my 13 week pregnancy, so I put 13 weeks in Google and
some of the things came up like 13 week scan, 13 week belly, 13 week bump, 13 wee feelings
and stuff like that. So, it's definitely worth using Google to help with your tags. Yeah,
I think that's everything that I wanted to tell you. I think that's all my tips I wanted
to share with you. I basically just wanted to say do videos that you like, engage with
your audience, enjoy what you do, and market it as well as you can. Thank you so much for
watching and I will see you very soon. Good luck. Bye. Say bye bye. Bye bye.
Definitely worth going to get, there's lots of little samples in there, some things that
I ...