If YOUR YouTube Channel Isn’t Growing Do This
– I’m gonna tell you what
to do if you’re not getting the results that you want on YouTube, and we’re starting right now. This video is brought to you by Placeit. Placeit has easy-to-edit
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description of this video. So a lot of people will
start a YouTube channel and when they upload a video they expect to get a certain amount of views, and that expectation
is typically something that happens up here
because they see a bunch of videos on YouTube that get published that get a lot of views on ’em.
For example, the comment
that I’m answering today is from Trinidragon, and Trinidragon says, “Hey, Nick, I’ve had a gaming channel “for a little more than a month now “and post at least three videos weekly. “I spend hours editing, “but I don’t get the
results that I wanted. “What do I do?” Trinidragon, you are not alone, and if you’re watching
this video right now there’s a really good
chance that you feel exactly what Trinidragon is
feeling like right now. You know, hey, I’m putting
in all of this work, I’m putting in all of this effort into making these awesome videos, and when I publish ’em to YouTube I don’t get hardly any views
at all if any views at all. What is going on? What do I have to do to
get this stuff to work? The first thing that
I’m gonna tell you is, as a content creator, this is
one of the biggest challenges that we face, one of the
hardest battles that we fight, and the reason for that
is because in our minds we have this expectation of
what we think should happen when we upload a video,
and how our content is in terms of quality and all of that, and why we think people should watch it, and why we think it’s good, but you know, we get attached to our content because it’s our content, it’s something that we’ve
made that we care about, and because of that, you know, you want other people to see it.
We’re publishing this to YouTube because we want other
people to participate in the content that we made,
and it doesn’t always happen. We don’t always get the
the response that we’re after, and it sucks. You know, it sucks when
you publish a video and you put in all this
time and all this work or research or whatever it happens to be and you don’t get the
views that you’re after, you don’t get anybody, you
don’t get anybody coming in, you know, that’s watching, and the people that do watch maybe, they
don’t leave a comment so you’re not getting any interaction, and it sucks because you start to feel like all of this effort that
you’re putting out there, you’re kinda putting it
out there for nothing, and because of that it can be frustrating, it can be depressing, it can
suck the wind out of your sail, so to speak, because
you’re just not getting that response that you were
hoping to get initially.
So if you are feeling this way, if you’re feeling like you’re
putting in all this work, you’re putting in all of this effort, you’re just, you know,
you’re putting your all into making this content
but you’re not getting the response that you had hoped,
here’s what you need to do. The very first thing that you need to do is you need to take a
step back for a second and you need to take a
a very hard objective look at what it is that you’re doing. Look at your channel
page, look at your titles, look at your thumbnails, look
at the video content itself and look at it objectively. Pretend that you didn’t make the content, pretend that you had nothing
to do with the content, anyway, shape, or form, and look at it and think to yourself is it clear what my video’s about in my thumbnails, is it clear what is happening
in my content with my title, when I click in the
video is it good content, like is this something that
I would watch, if the quality competitive
in terms of the other people that are making content like mine? The reason this is important to do and it’s like a critical thing
really that you need to do in the situation if
you’re not getting results is because I’ll get tons of
comments on my YouTube channel where people will say
things like, hey, Nick, I’m doing all of the
things that you recommend but I’m not getting any
results in my YouTube channel, I’m not getting views,
my channel’s not growing, things like that, and every single time, every time that I look at a channel, when I, you know, I open
it up, I’m like, okay, they’re applying all the stuff, let me look at the channel and
see what’s going on so maybe I can give ’em a
a tip that’ll help them out, but I’ll look at the channel
and 99.9% of the time they’re not doing the
things that I recommend here on the YouTube channel,
that YouTube recommends, that other people who make
content like me recommend, but they think they are and this is where the problem comes in.
Here’s the thing, if you’re
uploading content to YouTube and you’re not getting any results at all, people are not coming
in, they’re not watching, you’re not getting three views on a video, you know, you’re not
making any progress at all, then in that situation
you need to look at what it is that you’re doing because every single
the time that I go and I look at one of those channels,
what I see is I’ll see to where people, don’t
have their content optimized for mobile, they don’t have
their channel page optimized for mobile, their titles will be things like, “My Trip to the Store” or “You Wouldn’t Believe this Happened”, and the downside of that
is that you are doing that because you see a lot of big
channels on YouTube doing that type of thing and you’re
using them as inspiration, which is great because, you know, like successfully used clues, so-to-speak, but what you don’t wanna do is you don’t wanna replicate exactly what
it is what they’re doing because they already have an audience.
Larger channels, larger
active channels I should say, already have a built-in audience to where when they publish something they’re going to get a percentage
of clicks no matter what. It might not be a lot, but they are going to have some people come
in and watch that video, and because of that,
that’s gonna give YouTube the information that it needs to identify the right people for that particular video based on how those people click and respond to that content
that has been presented to them, but as somebody that’s
just getting started you don’t have that. If you apply the tactics that
the larger channels apply, in that situation you are
working against yourself because you don’t have
that built-in audience yet, you don’t have a content
a library that’s big enough or strong enough that has
you are being put in front of a bunch of people
that would click on a video that says my trip to the store.
So the solution to this is for
you to take an objective look at what it is that you’re doing and look at your titles, right? Let’s get into some actionable stuff here. Look at your titles and your thumbnail and how they work together as a package, and think to yourself if this
were to be presented to me on YouTube, would I click
on this, yes or no, and why? Don’t just say, yeah, I would, but be very specific on why
you would click on this. Look for things like
would this be something that I care about,
would the imagery that’s in here be something that might
grab my attention? You also wanna think about the imagery or the words that I’m
using in my thumbnail.
Are they clear and easy to read, are the objects that I’m focusing on, and can you see what
they are in the thumbnail, even if it’s scaled down to a small size? When you’re applying
this idea to your titles, you also wanna look at
those and you wanna think why would somebody care
about this particular title, why would this trigger somebody
to click on this video? Would it be because it evokes emotion? Would it be that I’m creating
curiosity of some kind? Would it be that I’m
helping them solve a problem and it’s just crystal clear that I’m helping them solve
the problem with this? Is it that I’m challenging
them in some way? Like what is it exactly, and define it?
Define what it is that
would make somebody click on the thumbnail and title that you’re putting out on YouTube, because if you can’t define it if you can’t be objective and step out and just get away from thinking like, hey, this a good video so of
course I would click on it, you have to assume that the people that are seeing your thumbnail
and title have never seen a video of yours before
and you also have to assume that they don’t know the video that’s behind the thumbnail
and title because they don’t.
When you see a bunch of videos loads up on your YouTube homepage, you have no idea when you click on one of those videos, you have no idea whatsoever what is behind that title and thumbnail. As soon as you click on it at that point, then your expectations start kicking in. As soon as the video starts playing you start making all of your
judgments in your brain on if you’re gonna stick around or not, but from the outside you
click on videos for a reason, you click on them because
the topic of the thumbnail or the topic of the title,
the topic of the video as a whole, but the
thumbnail and the title have pulled you in some way, and because of that you, if
If you’re not getting the results that you’re after, then
if you want to get results on your YouTube channel
you need to start looking at things in that way and
start defining everything that’s happening on your channel.
Why would somebody click on this? Why would someone care about
this particular video topic? If I’m doing a vlog, why would somebody care
to watch this vlog, right? You might think it’s entertaining because you put it together,
but from the outside, when somebody hasn’t even,
well, seen the video yet, they haven’t even clicked on it, why would they care enough in
order to click on that video, why would that be
important for someone else to make them want to click? But being able to define
your thumbnail and your title and why somebody should click on that and in the video content why
somebody should care about and why they should watch
that particular video for a long period, being
able to define those things can help you start
getting results on YouTube, because once you can identify
the reasons that people should click on your
content and the reasons that they should watch it and enjoy it, then in that situation you can
start leaning into those things, and then you can
start focusing on those things and then, by doing that, you’ll, since you’re identifying them, then you can make it easier for
other people to identify ’em because you’re actually
highlighting those things that are important to other people.
Now, other things could be a play as well on YouTube. So let’s say that you can get people to click, but they’re not just, they’re not, they’re just not staying and
hanging out on your video. Bleh, bleh, bleh, bleh. Now, there could be other
things at play as well. So let’s say that you can define why somebody should care about the video.
You can define that, yeah, you know what, I would click on this because of this, and, yeah, it’s crystal clear
what’s going on in this video and why somebody should care and why they should click on
this but they’re just not, then in that situation, other
things could be at play. For example, let’s say that
you just haven’t developed your skill set yet of just
being good on camera. Because of that, first, you need to watch some of my videos on how
to be better on camera, but, two, if you’re not good on camera and you haven’t developed that skill set of being able to communicate
well with the camera, then in that situation, you know, you might not be connecting with people when they come into your videos and you need to identify that. This is why it’s so important to look at all this stuff objectively. You need to be able to identify that so you can see it as
what it is and say, okay, maybe I’m just not good on camera yet or I’m not projecting
my best self on camera.
So because of that, I
need to spend some time just trying to learn how
to be better on camera and practicing the skill
of being better on camera. And the big trick to that, by the way, is just simply being comfortable that you are making videos enough, that you’re on camera enough, and that you’ve had enough experience to just simply be comfortable on camera or you just work through in
your brain however you can to be more comfortable on camera, and by doing that it’s going to help you be better on camera. But let’s say that you are good on camera and you’re comfortable, and
you’re like, you know what, that’s not the problem, I’m fine there. I’m comfortable on camera
and I think that I’m, you know, communicating
well and that sort of thing. Then in that situation,
you have to start looking at other things, and again,
we’re doing all this objectively pretending it’s not your content.
So you wanna look at your audio quality and you wanna look at
how your audio quality is compared to other people that make videos on similar topics that you do. You wanna listen to your audio and you wanna compare it
against other videos on YouTube, and you wanna say, okay, is my audio similar to
other videos on YouTube is my audio loud compared
to other videos on YouTube, is my audio soft compared
to other videos on YouTube? And how does it sound? Do I sound like I’m, you know, like right there sitting with the person, or do I sound like I’m really
far away from the camera because the microphone is way over there and I’m way over here? These things are super important because these are the things
that create the experience that viewers have when they
interact with your content. And look, I understand if
you’re just getting started because I was just getting
started at one point as well, if you are just getting started and you don’t know-how
to process audio yet or you don’t know how to
make your audio sound good.
Start looking at videos, start watching, I mean, you’re on YouTube, right? I have videos about this and a bunch of other people have
videos about this too. Start looking for tutorials on how to make your audio sound better. Stat looking to set up
tutorials for microphones on how to make microphones
get better or sound better. And the idea, I’ll tell ya right now, the idea is that you get your microphone as close to you as you possibly can where the people in the frame can’t see it but it’s close to you. So as an example, this microphone is, I have my elbow on my knee and I can reach down and I
can touch the microphone.
That’s how close this
the microphone is to me right now. So you wanna make sure that the microphone is as close to you as possible if you are doing talking head stuff like I do. Now, if you’re doing animation
videos or anything like that, the same thing applies. Even if you’re on your phone or your phone is the only thing you
have to record audio with, in that situation just get your microphone in your phone close to your mouth as well. I mean, you don’t have
to get it like this, but you know, just get it close enough to where it’s not sitting on a table or it’s not far away from you. Just get it close enough
to where you can focus the sound of your voice
as close as possible to the microphone to make it sound better.
Another thing that can help your videos not do well on YouTube
to where you wouldn’t get the results that you wanted
is if you’re editing is bad, and what I mean by that is you’re making corny editing decisions
that might not be a good fit for the people that are
watching your videos compared to good editing decisions
that would be a great fit for the people that are
Watch your videos. That can come down to the
graphics that you’re using, how you’re editing your videos, how fast you’re actually
cutting the videos, how slow you’re cutting the
videos, your music choices, you know, all of it,
all the stuff within your video content
that is going to also dictate how people are going to
respond to that content. So because of that, any
views that you do get, it’s important to look in
your audience retention, even if it’s a low number of views, just so that you can see for those people that are coming in how are they responding to what it is that you are doing, and you can find that audience retention in your YouTube analytics.
Even if you’re a mobile content creator and you only have your phone and you’re just making
videos on your phone, doing all of it on your phone, you still have access to one
of the most important things which is the audience retention report right inside of your YouTube analytics in the YouTube Creator Studio app. This is free. You can get it through
the Google Play Store and you can get it through iTunes as well, or the Apple Store, whatever it’s called. Another thing that’s also
important to make sure that you’re keeping in
mind when it comes to the results that you’re getting on YouTube is what’s happening up here
in terms of your expectations, because when you’re first
starting on YouTube a lot of people are comparing themselves to people that have a content
library of 100 videos, 500 videos, 1000 videos, things like that, and when you’re first getting started and you only have 10
videos on your channel you can’t expect a lot of
activity to be happening because you don’t have a
a lot of videos out there yet that people are coming
in and just watching, you know, casually over time.
So for example, if you have
500 videos on your channel and out of all of those
500 videos you have, you know, 20 people a
day or 50 people a day or 100 people, whatever it happens to be, you have a lot of views
coming in every day. However, if you have 10
videos on your channel, then in that situation you might not have a lot of views coming in every single day based on only having 10
videos on your channel. So it’s really important
to not compare yourself to the people that have
huge content libraries when you are just getting
started on YouTube. I have a video that
you can watch right here that will tell you about how many videos that you need to make to get certain subscriber milestones, 10,000, 100,000 subscribes,
even a million, on YouTube.
So you can click on that and
you can watch it right now, and if you haven’t yet
make sure you subscribe. Thank you for watching. I’ll see you next time.
