- Choosing your YouTube channel names can be tough
but it doesn't have to be.
In this video, we're gonna run through six simple steps
that you can follow right now
to get new ideas and pick the right channel name for you.
(upbeat music)
Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video
where we help you amplify your business
and brand with video.
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make sure you click that Subscribe button
and all the links to everything we mention in this video
you can find linked in the description box below.
So, let's jump into it.
Choosing a YouTube channel name
can be a tough decision.
It makes an important statement about you,
the content that you're creating
and also your business and brand,
so it's perfectly reasonable
that you wanna invest the time to get this right.
So, whether you're stuck
coming up YouTube channel name ideas
or you already have a long list of great ideas
but you're just trying to decide
on which one is the best one for you.
The six steps that we're about to cover
is gonna make it so much easier for you
to quickly pick the right channel name for you.
So, step one is to make a list
of all the content that your channel is about
or your channel is going to be about.
So, what topics are you gonna cover?
What field, what industry?
How broad or how focused will these areas be?
What style of content are you going
to be rolling out as well?
So, an example would be video marketing
and video creation for us
and there the type of content, the style of content
are tutorials and how-to videos.
So, some other examples could be vlogging,
it could be reviews, entertainment, gaming, videos,
there is a huge range of videos
that you could be creating but you wanna get some clarity
around what they are.
Once you've got all of those ideas
and everything down, step number two
is to get clear on your end goal.
Is it building a personal brand?
Is it building a company or both?
Is it something you might wanna sell off
or to pull yourself or your name away from
at some point?
Using your own name can be a great place to start.
It'll help you build your personal brand
but it can make it a little bit more difficult
to sell later down the track
if you're building out a business
or to even expand beyond just you
if you wanna bring some other people in to help you
and it all can be done
but it's worth keeping in mind
when you're deciding on your name.
Once you've given that some thought,
step number three is to make a list of existing channels
out there that you like the name of.
So, you wanna get clear on what do you like about them?
Is it any specific wording,
is it they're really descriptive about the type of channel?
Do you immediately know what the channel
is going to be about just from the name
of the channel or is it a certain style that you like?
Primal Video versus Nick Nimmin.
Two totally different types of channel names.
Step number four is to make a list
of all the words that describe your topic.
Use a thesaurus, you could go to Google
and do Google searches to see the language
that your audience is using
but also to see the suggestions that pop up
when you're typing in these words
for other words that are like them.
So, typically for us, we'll do this in a column
in a Google Sheet
and for our channel, we would include words
like video, video production, video editing,
video marketing, video for business
and obviously the list goes on.
Now at this point, if you've already chosen
that you wanna build a personal brand,
then your job's gonna be much easier here.
You don't really need to brainstorm around your name.
Step number five is to add in any words
that describe your approach
and that might work with a list
of words that are already describing your topic.
So, here I'd suggest that you add these
into a separate column
in the same Google sheet,
so for example, we included the word Primal
in this list, it does have a few meanings
but the relevant one here is that it describes our approach
which is focused entirely on getting the best results
with minimal work
and that definition of primal
is essential or fundamental.
Using a thesaurus can be super helpful
for helping you find new ideas.
Think of words that you like the sound of,
that describe the outcome for your audience
or the goal of your content
or the goal of your business
or the goal of your YouTube channel too.
And that leaves us with step number six
which is choosing your name.
Now there's a few sub points here
with this one to help you choose the right name for you,
so you wanna start out by combining words
in both of those columns,
so in this case Primal Video worked really well for us,
it's focused enough to make it clear
that we're talking about video-related stuff
but it's not too limiting
that it prevents us from talking
about all the topics that we cover on our channel.
You'll also wanna consider if it's important for you
to have the topic instantly recognizable in your name
versus something that doesn't really mean much
but might give you some greater flexibility later.
So, anyone's first thoughts or impressions
when they hear Primal Video
is that it's likely got something to do with video.
I'd also strongly recommend
that you're considering using words
that are easy to say and easy to spell
just to keep it simple
so that when you tell people to go on ahead
to mychannelname.com or YouTube.com/mychannelname,
you wanna make it so easy for them
to be able to type that in,
to be able to remember that
without the need to type in random characters
or dashes or underscores
or any unnecessary symbols
or something that they're not gonna remember.
And another really important thing
that you'll wanna do
is to check if it's already being used.
So, that's checking on YouTube,
checking other social media platforms,
checking website domains.
Now you don't need them all
but it's definitely worth considering what's available
when you're selecting your name.
You can head to namecheck.com
and type in some of your names.
It's gonna do a search,
not just for website domains
but also across your social media platforms as well
and it'll quickly tell you
what's being used and what isn't.
And one last really big pro tip
is to not procrastinate for too long
on selecting your name.
You can change it later.
The most important thing is to get started.
So, we actually started with Video Editing Coach
before Primal Video
but we quickly found that that was way too limiting
given all the content
that we actually wanted to cover on our channel.
So, it is possible to transition
and to rebrand but starting is the most important thing.
So now that you've got your YouTube channel name sorted,
there's two videos linked on screen.
The first one is gonna help you rank your videos in 2019
and the second one is a suggestion from YouTube based
on all the other stuff you've been watching.
I've no idea what it is,
I hope it's awesome, I'll see you in the next one.