Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant and YouTuber and then this no BS growth guide
for YouTube in 2019, we're going to be going through the only three strategies you need
to focus on to growing your YouTube channel.
These are all based upon my own data and internal tests of growing a channel from zero to 25,000
subscribers.
Make sure you check out the links in the description to a timestamp table of contents, along with
some other helpful videos to better understanding your audience.
And of course, using YouTube ads and some other growth strategies that I'll touch on
and when you stick around to the end, I'll be sharing with you the three truths of growing
YouTube channel that nobody wants to admit.
But before we get into that, let's talk about the three actionable strategies.
And the first one is so basic, but nobody wants to say it's a strategy because it's
so basic and everybody wants a shortcut.
Looking for a faster way to grow your channel, that's normal.
We all want a faster way to grow our channel, and this is the fastest way to grow your channel.
You ready for it?
It's super simple.
Guess what?
It's making more videos.
That's it.
Making more videos now, before you skip and leave a nasty comment in the description,
hear me out.
The whole premise of growing your YouTube channel is to better understand who your ideal
viewers are and deliver better content and become a better presenter or, you know, influencer
as you grow your channel.
And there's no better way to do that than actually making more videos.
There are a bunch of other promotion strategies that can actually just suck up your time from
doing what's most important, which is making more videos.
Number of occurrences is so key.
So unless you're already publishing five videos a week and you're twiddling your thumbs, like,
I don't know what else to do well, then your goal should be to get to three to five videos
a week consistently weekend and week out.
Because number of occurrences at the end of the day is ultimately what is going to contribute
to the growth of your channel.
And guess what, you make a video that you don't like, or you don't think is very good,
you can always make another one.
I've remade some videos on my channel five different times.
Why?
Because you get feedback via comments, you improve your camera, you improve your lighting
or you learn something new.
And so, whenever you make a video, it's always really important to remember that you can
always make it again, you can always improve upon it.
And that actually ties into one of the myths.
So, I'll stop talking about that until we get to the end of the video.
Now, the second big one, of course we could cut right there.
Say just make more videos and cut done, right?
But the second one you want to do is focus on ranking.
So, this is in terms of actually promoting your video.
So, once you've actually gotten to three to five videos a week consistently, it's crazy
how many small channels I see, that's not even at that.
So that's base number one, you just got to do that, get to that, get to that first.
And then when it comes time to actually promoting, let's start by actually trying to rank videos.
This is again where people try and shortcut the process.
There is no shortcut to ranking your videos.
There's no shortcut to understanding how to rank your videos.
Now, when I get to strategy three, you'll see how you'll be able to compound your ranking.
But for now, you want to make sure that you're posting videos, people actually want.
Not the videos you want to make.
I made a lot of videos that I thought were cool and nobody else did.
And ultimately that's going to happen to you at some form or level.
So, the best way to figure out what to make your videos about so that they'll actually
rank in YouTube search, which is the only part of the YouTube algorithm, you could have
any possible little ounce of control over suggested videos, you can't control that at
all.
I'm sorry.
You just, you just can't.
As a small channel, suggested videos is at the whim of the algorithm ranking is something
that you can actually do.
And so to do this, you want to go into Firefox private browsing mode.
Don't do Google incognito mode because Google is actually still pulling your user data into
incognito mode.
So, you need to go to Firefox private browsing or Safari.
If you have a VPN and you know what that is, turn that on as well.
And then start searching for content as if you were your ideal viewer and whatever pops
up in that suggested box that is a actual goldmine for content ideas.
That's the best place to go for content ideas.
There are a lot of fancy softwares out there that talk about scraping this and finding
this and copying or people saying, just copy what your competitors are doing.
But at the end of the day, that YouTube search box, it takes time.
It's real work, but as long as you focus on creating content, that is for your ideal viewer
and you learn how to communicate with your ideal viewer, better than everybody else in
the long run you're going to win, which is important because YouTube is a long game.
There's nothing short term in terms of results when it comes to YouTube.
So it's long, it's tedious, but it's going to pay off in the long run.
And the way you can make sure that it's going to pay off in the long run, the third and
final strategy I have for you, really is only these three, everything else is gravy on top.
And that is your content pillars.
You want to choose three to five max types of content that you're going to create on
your channel.
So think of three, if you're doing three days a week or five days a week, think of it as
each day is a different show or a different topic or for a different type of person.
And so what you want to do, is view it as you're creating your TV schedule, right?
So my particular instance, Mondays are always a top five or top seven video, talking about
a review or just going through a quick listicle.
Tuesdays are typically something around marketing videos and Wednesdays or something around
growing on YouTube or building your business, right?
And then we also have productivity videos and some other sales funnels, specific videos
and stuff like that, that we do every once in a while.
But really those are just kind of the big three.
And so what you want to do is identify your big three and then go hard at them, because
what will ultimately happen, is when you combine number of occurrences with creating videos
that are focused an actual search phrase, as opposed to something that just came out
of your head and you're focused on those different swim lanes since you've come up with, YouTube
is bit eventually start going to start seeing your channel as the authority in those particular
pillars on those particular key words.
And as you can see here from some of the screenshots, even as a small channel, with less than 10,000
subscribers, I was able to start to rank consistently multiple videos for similar key words.
Now, I didn't always claim the top spot because I am still a relatively small channel.
But what this allows you to do, is to get at least two or three videos, the top 10 search
results.
And so even though you're not first, you do look like more of an authority to people who
are searching because inevitably, they're going to look and go, “Hey, look at this
person, there they have for six different videos on this topic, they must be an expert”,
even though none of your videos are in the top one or two spots.
And so those are the three concrete actionable things you can do through the rest of 2019
to ensure that your channel grows.
Everything else is, just something fancy, that we'll ultimately distract you from these
three core things that you need to focus on.
So, once you have three to five videos a week solid, and you're starting to see yourself
rank on those, then you can worry about getting fancier.
But until then, this is really how you want to focus to make sure that you create a strong
content base, so you can continue to grow in the future, as opposed to trying to get
a quick hit, where you'll get a lot of views, if you get something to go viral and you'll
get a bunch of subscribers and then no one's going to stick around.
So, this is really making sure that you have a nice even growth path and it continues to
grow long-term.
So before we get into the breach channel truths, if you want to learn more about how to create
a comprehensive video marketing strategy or come up with your ideal customer or viewer,
there are links in the description to a 30 minute video, that walks you A to Z and everything
in between to creating your YouTube content system, along with a in-depth guide on how
to use data to come up with who you should be targeting with your videos.
So now let's go into the three truths nobody really wants to talk about.
So, the first truth is done is better than perfect.
Because when it comes to YouTube, perfection is never.
And I mean, never rewarded.
And this kind of ties into the first part of this video, whereas talking about the importance
of just having a number of occurrences in terms of videos.
What's really cool, is with YouTube, you can post version number one.
That's okay.
You know, you gave it your best shot, right?
The lighting was off.
The audio was bad, whatever.
Two or three months later, you give it another shot.
It gets a little better.
It gets a little better and a little better.
And instead of trying to have the perfect version right out of the gate, like you see
with a lot of large creators, because it's hard not to compare yourself.
We'll get to more of that in a bit.
And instead of trying to go for this perfect version, you just start down here.
And every time you make the video, you get a little better, a little better, and a little
better.
Because when it comes to YouTube, this isn't live TV.
You can always take a video down if you think it's really that bad, but ultimately, it's
just going to help your brand.
And you grow as a creator and your community, as they see you continue to improve your content.
And it will also help with your confidence.
Now, the second big truth, when it comes to growing a YouTube channel and trying to become
a YouTuber is, that there is nothing holding you back.
There's nothing holding you back.
When it comes to posting content, everyone goes through a time in their YouTube career
or project or life where they feel like the algorithm hates them, or you start looking
at other channels and you go, why on earth are they growing so fast?
How do they get so many views?
I did the same video or my video quality's better.
Or they forgot this, this and that, or their lighting's terrible, or fill in the blank.
There's a certain element to this, where you're never going to know why that video or that
channel is doing so much better than you are, because for all, you know, they're just paying
for views, which unfortunately happens a lot as well.
And so one of the truths of being a YouTuber, is you have to put your blinders on when you're
making your content and focus on running your own race, because there is no conspiracy against
your videos, as much as it may feel like.
And finally, truth number three, is there are haters everywhere.
There are always going to be haters, whether they're in real life, discouraging you from
trying to be a YouTube influencer or growing a YouTube channel for your business or online
in the comments section.
And it's just part of creating content and putting yourself out there, what's most important
is you don't give any credence or any platform to those types of people.
I know from personal experience in the beginning, I tried to be reasonable.
I tried to be nice.
And you know what, nine out of 10 times that negativity that's being thrown at you or the
negative mean comments you see underneath your videos, have very little to do with you.
You have to delete the comment or brush off the negativity and just keep going.
So, I sincerely hope you got some value out of this video.
I know it was very short and sweet to the point, but it's really 80/20 when it comes
to growing your YouTube channel, there's so many distractions.
Let's focus on the three things that really matter most.
Make sure you check out the links in the description to some other helpful videos that will allow
you to take a deeper dive into creating your video marketing plan and playing with YouTube
ads, if that's something you're interested in.
So, go ahead and hit that like button and subscribe for more YouTube channel growth
tutorials, just like this one.
And until the next video, keep building the business you love.