Alright, so let's help you pick the absolute best name possible for your
YouTube channel because the right name makes all the difference because it's
going to allow you to feel more confident in what you're doing and it's
more importantly, it's gonna provide that clarity and alignment between your
content and your subscribers so when someone shows up to your channel well
they're gonna know what they're gonna get before they even press play.
So a name really is important. So with all that said, let's dive in to tip #1
and really the first direction you can go when choosing a name for your
channel which is as simple as it sounds and that is using your own name. Now this
one is literally as easy as it sounds and it's really just using your first
name and your last name. So myself for example, using Adam Earhart and Tony
Robbins and Brendon Burchard and Evan Carmichael and Brian Tracy. You get the
picture. Now going with your name, your own personal name is absolutely
fantastic for personal brands and in fact, if you have a personal brand or your
business is built around your own personality and essentially around you,
this is pretty much the only option. That said, we will cover some mistakes you
want to avoid later on so make sure to stick around. But if you're a coach or a
consultant or an expert or an author or a speaker or a trainer or anybody who
really builds their business around their own personality, well naming your
youtube channel around your own personal brand is going to be the best choice for
you. After all, having a YouTube channel is one of the best brand building assets
you could possibly hope to have. Especially in the realm of personal
branding because nowhere else do you have the opportunity to connect with
someone and really get to see their face and hear their voice and again, next to
being in person it really is the most effective form of communication
available to you. Plus, investing in your personal brand and essentially setting
yourself up for success by naming your YouTube channel accordingly, well this is
going to serve you for a long time whether you choose to start a new
project or start a new venture or even if someday you want to get a job or run
a joint venture or partner somebody, you're still gonna have this
amazing asset that's been working for you for days, weeks, months, hopefully even
years. Alright, so the next option is naming your channel after your business
name and again, this one is pretty much just as obvious as naming it after your
personal name. But there's a few nuances here for when you want to choose your
business name opposed to your personal name. So let's dive into that now.
First of all, as a business if you don't necessarily have one person that you
want to put front and center for your brand and really build a personal brand
around that person, well then a business name is gonna be fantastic. This is also
really valuable if you've got multiple people on your team that you're planning
on putting in front of the camera or creating content. Because obviously this
would be incredibly weird to have it as your personal name and then show all
sorts of random people on your channel. It's gonna be confusing, people aren't
really gonna know who is who. Another reason you'd want to choose your business name
over your personal name is really depending on if you ever want to really
grow the business or essentially build it up to the point that you could sell
it or partner with someone else. A personal brand is next to impossible to
sell but a business name really easy to transfer over.
So with that considered, why might you still want to choose a personal brand?
Well really when it comes to marketing and when it comes to building that know
like and trust factor it's important to remember that people, they like doing
business with people, not necessarily businesses.
So by humanizing your brand by making it more about person or really just using
your name, it's gonna make it easier to build that connection to build that know
like and trust factor and to sort of build up an audience a lot quicker than
you would if you're kind of a faceless nameless corporation. Alright, so moving
right along to our third option and third category, which is to name your
YouTube channel after the category that it's in. For example: binging with babish
is all about cooking and therefore, is included binging right into the name there.
Triathlon Taron is all about triathlon and again,
just like binging with babish what we've done here is we've gone a bit of a
hybrid where we're using both the category and the name of the person in
the videos. Global mountain bike Network is a bit of a mouthful
But it's very obvious and what it's about., it's about mountain biking. The beauty here and the
simplicity of going with a category naming convention is it really makes a
crystal clear your value proposition or at the very least the category that your
business is in, allowing people to decide really quickly if this is for them
or if it's not. For example, let's say you're in the guitar niche, well if you
included guitar in your YouTube channel you're going to very clearly
dictate and say that this is for guitar people. Same thing if you're in the
cooking nation, you include cooking in the title. Or if you're in the triathlon
nation you include triathlon in the title. Or the camera and videography
niche and you include film making or video, you get the picture. Now this third
category is one that I actually don't mind too much. My preference obviously
being that personal name because again, people like people rather than
businesses. It's just that much easier to build a connection and it really
humanizes your brand. But naming your YouTube channel after the category or a
hybrid there uh still effective, as long as you avoid the following mistakes that
were boats cover now. Alright, so the first mistake that I see when I'm doing
a channel audit or when I'm walking a client through a new YouTube strategy or
telling my students about what to name their channels, essentially it's being a
little too clever. Essentially trying to be cute and creative over clear.
You always want to prioritize clarity over creativity and pretty much all of your
marketing and this is especially true when it comes to naming a YouTube
channel or something that you're really going to hang your sign on and really
announce to the world what it is that you're about, what kind of content you're
creating. You see, there's a great thing that I absolutely love which is that:
Clarity = Customers or in this case viewers or subscribers. If you're not
clear though and if you're just confusing about your title name or the
value proposition of your channel, well you're not going to attract people
because they're not really gonna know what to expect and therefore they're
probably just gonna go find someone else. Now does this mean that you have to suck
all the fun out of your name completely and have the most boring bland dry name
ever, of course not, right. But you need to make sure that if you're going to be
creative that it is an alignment and that it's also clear about what it's
about. For example, if you're in a niche that has some insider jargon or tech
speak or lingo or terms that people outside of the industry may not know,
well that's okay to use because again, be focused on who it is that you're trying
to serve and if they'll understand what you're talking about, now that's good
enough for me. On the other hand, if nobody knows what you're talking about
you're gonna need a new channel name. Alright the next mistake that I
frequently see, especially with people that have been around the YouTube game
for any length of time is branding themselves for the short term.
Essentially choosing a YouTube channel based on where they're at right
now, right here today in their business rather than on where they actually want
the business to go. Now this mistake kind of seeps over into the content strategy
as well, which makes it that much more fatal. But the reality is is that if
you're in a current niche or a current market or selling a current service
right now with your business and you want to transition or you want to leave
the door open to transition in the future, you want to take that into
consideration when you're choosing your brand name. Again, this is the beauty of
using something like your personal name which is going to allow you to grow and
change and evolve over time. Or even your business name, if you're want to expand
into new markets or offer new services. Pretty much never works with the
category name though. Because if you've got a YouTube channel all about guitars
and you want to transition over to talking about painting, that's gonna be a
pretty awkward jump. I mean honestly, you're gonna probably
lose all the subscribers anyway because there's very little overlap, so you
probably be better off starting a separate channel but that's another
story for another day. The point that I want to make is be long-term thinking.
Really strategize about the direction of your business and of your offers and
where you want to go when choosing a name rather than just focusing on the
short term and where you're at right now. Alright, the next mistake that I see is
a bit of a continuation from the last one and that's essentially: Hyper- Niching
or not giving yourself enough room to grow. If you've been involved in business
or marketing for any length of time then you know the importance and the power of
niching down, really finding your ideal target market and that exact person that
loves you, loves what you do, wants to tell everyone about just how great you are.
Well yes, niching down is important. But on
YouTube it's probably the one exception where I want you to niche down but I
also want to leave yourself a little bit of room for expansion and for growth in
order to give your channel a greater likelihood of success. Let me explain.
You see, the way that the YouTube algorithm works is that it always does its best,
just like the other social media algorithms, to try to show your content
to the most relevant person possible. Well if you nice down so incredibly
small it's gonna be hard for YouTube to go out there and find that ideal and
perfect person. That's why your content should be a variety of really niche
topics, slightly broader topics and probably pretty decent broad topics and
kind of chucked on top. There's no magic ratio that works for absolutely
every single person but if you stick with around 30% really niche topics, 30%
kind of general and then 30% broad, ma'am you're doing okay. Yeah, I'm aware that
works out to 90% but that gives you about a 10% fudge factor too. Anyway, you
do want to be clear with your value proposition and with the market that
you're trying to serve and you do definitely want to find a niche but make
sure not to name your channel that exact hyper micro niche. You may want to take a
step or two back, look a little bit broader and of course, your content can
be niche down and it's probably gonna change and evolve over time as you get
feedback from your audience, you dig through your analytics and you see what
content performs and what doesn't. But you don't want to build your entire
brand or business around a name or around this tiny little obscure part of
the market that very few people care about. Aright, so now that we have that
covered, the next thing you're gonna want to do and the next piece of the puzzle
is to check out the video I have linked up right here on How to start a
successful YouTube channel. So make sure to check that out now and I'll see you
in the next episode.