Tits.
I said tits everyone.
Tits is what I said.
I said tits.
The bright side of branding, business, and being your own boss.
Hey bosses.
It's Sunny Lenarduzzi and today I am sharing my top five tips for growing your very successful
YouTube channel.
I have to say a big, huge thank you to you.
Yes you, because you have been an incredibly vital part of growing this community and growing
this channel as fast as it's grown over the last twelve months and a bit.
I'm so thrilled to share, and humbled to share, that on forbes.com last week, I was named
to the twenty must watch channels that will change your business.
Holy.
No big deal, no big deal.
It's fine.
Everybody calm down.
It's fine.
Calm down.
Crazy huge honor.
I really can't believe it and I'm in some amazing company.
I'm going to just link to those channels below this video as well because they're great examples
of what you can do on YouTube.
Today I wanted to give back and share my experience of growing my channel.
Keep in mind if you're sitting there thinking, "Easy for you to say.
You've got 50,000 subscribers", which, by the way, we just surpassed that milestone
so again, thank you, but here's the thing.
Exactly a year ago today, I had less than 5,000 subscribers, I had just basically gotten
started on YouTube, and I started from scratch.
I had basically no subscribers when I started, really no videos on my channel, and I taught
myself everything.
I'm going to share with you in this video my keys to growing a successful YouTube channel
because if I can do it and if I can get 50,000 subscribers in a year, you can to.
Let's get started.
Tip number one is set your intention.
This might seem very counterintuitive, but don't focus on subscriber growth, focus on
the quality of your community, the comments on your videos, and also your views.
That's what matters most because we want to make sure that your content is actually getting
traction.
The only way that you're going to gain traction on YouTube is if you have a clear intent when
you start making videos and a clear objective moving forward.
What are you doing this for?
If it's just for fun and you're not taking it seriously, no one else will.
I kind of fell into this backwards because I started making YouTube videos to answer
client questions because I was getting the same ones over and over again.
I didn't actually start with the intent of growing my channel to where it is today, but
I realized there was a need for it.
My intent when I started was to help people and to teach people and to educate.
That was my intent and that's what I've stuck to the entire time with all of my content,
so get really clear on your objective.
Also, if your intent is to start making videos on YouTube to make money, don't do it because
you don't make money making videos on YouTube, but if you do, it's going to take a few years
usually to get there if you want to do it the sponsorship route and you want to have
people pay for your videos and that kind of stuff and sponsor your videos and give you
gadgets and all those things.
That doesn't happen until you have some serious growth behind you.
Set your intent.
Get really clear on why you're doing what you're doing and take it seriously.
Still have fun, but take it seriously.
On that note, if your intent is to grow your business using YouTube, amazing, because it's
one of the best tools out there to do that, but if that is your intent, you have to figure
out how to get your traffic off of YouTube onto whatever your conversion site is.
Whether that's growing your email list, which is how I've grown my list to thousands upon
thousands of people strictly using YouTube, or driving people to your website, your ecommerce
site, whatever your business conversion site is, make sure that you're taking all of this
traffic that you're earning off of youtube and sending them to your business, to your
conversion site online, or maybe even offline, kind of have people contact you offline.
Tip number two is build your community from scratch.
I know that sounds daunting and difficult, but here is the best thing that I did when
I started on YouTube.
I found like-minded YouTubers with similar audiences to me, covering similar content
to me, and I would go in and I would engage with them.
I would engage with their community in the comments section.
I would answer any questions if their community had questions that weren't getting answered.
I would be there to help and to serve and to support.
I wasn't there to promo my channel or promo my videos.
I was strictly there to help and support and be a part of that community and be seen by
people who were interested in my kind of content and then hopefully bring them over to my channel.
That drove so much growth at the beginning.
Here's another little bonus tip.
You also want to make sure that you're following these people with similar audiences to you
on other social media platforms.
Engage with them on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and start building a relationship
with them, and then eventually you can collaborate with them and cross-promote each other's channels.
Building that community right from the start, the simplest way to do it is find people with
similar audiences to you, who share similar content to you, and be engaged in the community,
both on YouTube first and then on all the other social platforms as well.
The other thing about building a community from scratch is asking the question.
People will do what you ask them to do.
Whether you think it's annoying or not, from day one, on all of my videos, I've always
said at the end, "If you like this video, hit the like button below, share it with your
friends, and be sure to subscribe at the end of my videos", and people do it.
It has to be good content, but people will take action if you say those words.
Tip number three is consistency.
I talk about this a lot and I know a few of you are sitting there thinking, "Sounds like
so much work."
Sorry, but it is work.
There is no magic formula here.
The more consistent you are, the more that you build trust with your community and they
know that you're going to be back every single week.
Try and post on a regular schedule.
If you can't do it every week, do it once a month.
Set a day once a month that you're going to post.
Just try and be consistent in your posting schedule because that's going to keep people
coming back, sharing your content with their audiences, growing your reach week over week.
Try again to stay consistent with your schedule, but also stay consistent with your content.
Try and focus on one niche.
If I have one tip for you that's going to grow your channel extremely fast, focus on
your niche.
What is the specific area that you want to talk about, that your genius zone is in?
Focus on that.
Answer every single question related to that niche in your YouTube videos and make YouTube
videos around that kind of content, and that's going to help you find the niche audience
that wants to know that information and grow your channel at a much faster rate than posting
random videos about random different things.
Focus on using the right keywords, use Google AdWords keyword planner, and just focus on
your niche and be consistent with your content, not only from the content perspective and
what you're talking about, but also from the scheduling perspective.
Which brings me to my next point, which is tip number four, and it's quality content.
Make sure that you love what you're talking about, it's something that you're passionate
about, because if you're not passionate about it and you don't want to sit there and talk
about it, people won't want to watch it.
Sorry.
I love what I talk about.
I love what I do.
I've been doing it for almost a decade now, which seems weird, but I can talk about this
all day, every day.
That's why I love making videos about it and I love sharing them with you guys.
Make sure that you're passionate about it first and foremost.
When you also look at the biggest YouTubers out there, there's really three buckets of
content that they fit into.
It's either tutorial-based videos, which is really what my channel is all about, it's
product reviews, or it's entertainment-based, so things like vlogs, comedy, prank-style
channels.
Those are really the three buckets.
There are some exceptions to the rules, but figure out if you fit into one of those buckets
and then just stick with it and go with it and see how fast you can grow.
The fastest way to grow your channel on YouTube is to do tutorials because that's what people
are searching for, so that's a great place to start.
If you want to do entertainment, go full force, go for it.
Look at big channels, see where they started, and get some inspiration behind that.
Also, make sure that your thumbnails on your videos are consistent so that when people
see you in the big search result and they see all these other videos, they know and
recognize that it's your video by your thumbnail and they're more apt to click on it.
You also want to make sure that you're setting up playlists to increase your watch time on
your channel, because the more that you can keep people on your channel, the more it tells
YouTube that you've got a great quality channel that people actually want to tune into and
the higher they will rank your videos.
Set up playlists so that people can binge watch a bunch of your videos at once and stay
on your channel for a long time and your retention rate will be super high, which will clue in
YouTube to quality content.
Make sure that your thumbnails are also on point and consistent across all of your videos.
Tip number five.
This is really important, and if there are children around right now, earmuffs for them.
Okay?
Fuck perfection.
That's tip number five.
That was my biggest hangup when it came to starting videos on YouTube.
I was so scared I didn't have the right set, the right camera.
I thought I had to invest thousands of dollars into my equipment.
The funny part is the day I made my first video, I didn't intend it to be seen by 80,000
people, which is what it has been seen by now, so I literally filmed it in my pajamas
in front of a window with no lighting setup, just natural light, a webcam, and I hadn't
washed my hair that day.
Perfection is not important.
You just need to start and get over those hurdles.
To get started making videos on YouTube, everybody has a camera in their phone, I'm sure, or
you have a webcam on your computer.
Start with that.
Use a window for natural lighting.
I used iMovie for basically the first year of creating my videos and now I'm very lucky
to have a very talented editor who uses Adobe Premiere.
If you want to upgrade eventually, cool, but start with what you have.
See, perfection doesn't matter.
Start with what you have and go from there and just be you.
That's the most important part.
Flaws and all, coughs and all, just be you, because honestly, I truly believe that's what
has made me grow at such a fast rate because I'm just me and you like me or you don't.
That's the most important part.
Be yourself, have your quirks, don't be perfect, and that's really the main ingredient and
the key to having a successful YouTube channel because if you're just yourself, you don't
have any competition because no one else can be you.
A little bonus tip because this is a question I'm asked quite often.
If you're afraid of trolls, don't worry about them.
The reality is you dictate what your community looks, sounds, and feels like, and I can honestly
say I've been very lucky in the sense that I haven't dealt with a lot of trolls or negative
comments.
You just have to consider the source if you do get those comments.
Here's how I would love for you to think about it because it was something that I worried
about because no one wants to see negative comments and negative comments hurt and just
plain mean angry comments hurt.
What hurts more than is regret.
You don't want to look back a year from now and think, "Man, I should have started earlier."
Just get started, and if something negative happens or you get a negative comment, understand
that that person is not out there, they're not in the game, they're not actually doing
this, and they're not putting themselves out there, so be really proud of yourself that
you're doing it and they're not and that's why they're angry little trolls.
Bye trolls.
All in all, there is no quick hack, so sorry.
It does take work, but if you focus on things that you're passionate about and love talking
about, it doesn't feel like work.
Also, just make sure that you focus on building your community, building your tribe, serving
your audience in the best way that you can, create content that either helps people, inspires
them, or entertains them, and really just keep plugging away, be persistent, and the
growth will come.
I promise you.
If you want an even bigger, better guide to growing your YouTube channel and if you do
want to optimize your content, I have the ultimate YouTube SEO checklist.
You can download it for free below this video.
It's the "views while you snooze" checklist.
Make sure that you grab that.
The link is below this video to download it.
You can join myself and thousands of other bosses from all over the world in the Be Your
Own Boss mastermind group on Facebook.
It is a thriving community where we're all helping each other grow our businesses and
live the lives that we want to live.
If you like this video, hit the like button below, share it with your friends, and be
sure to subscribe.
I will see you guys next week.
Thanks for watching.