If you're looking to start a YouTube channel the right way this year or maybe you feel that your current channel is stuck, I want to encourage you to tell you that you clicked on the right video because in this video we're going to share this deep training that was actually given at our live event called Grow With Video Live and Vanessa Lau who is the one that's going to give this training, she taught on how to actually start and scale your YouTube channel the right way and how to become in the 10 percentile of your industry or niche that you're trying to dominate. with your YouTube channel. And if you don't know who Vanessa Lau is, she is amazing.
She's actually amassed over a million followers across her social media platforms, all teaching people how to create a business using social media and YouTube. And she's such a bright mind. And literally, as I was sitting in the room while she was giving this talk, my mind was blown.
And so I'm actually gonna ask you to save this video because you're gonna need to watch it all the way through. And number two, you're gonna wanna watch this training again next year and the year after that and the year after that. But let's jump into the training from Vanessa Lau.
We're going to talk about growing your reach, scaling secrets, and specifically the tactics and the tools that I use to grow my YouTube channel to over half a million subscribers and over 28 million views in less than three years. Now, I always keep saying this to Sean and Heather. I cannot believe I'm here on this stage because let's be real. Three years ago, I was on the other side of this stage because I was trying to figure out how to grow my YouTube channel and how to get started. At the time, three years ago...
I had just quit my job with no backup plan. All I knew is I wanted to create videos online. And so what I decided to do is, you know what, let's just work minimum wage, let's just be a coffee barista, and let's make videos on the side. And that's what I did. I started small, I started scrappy, I even wrote my video ideas on receipt paper while I was serving lattes at my job.
That's where my humble beginnings began. Now, fast forward to today, I now have half a million YouTube subscribers, over 200,000 followers on Instagram. I founded a program, the Bossgram Academy, where we help creators launch one-on-one coaching programs and sign paid clients using social media. And now we've done over $6 million in sales with over 6,000 clients internationally. Creating videos online changed my entire life.
And I want it to change yours too. But here's the problem. This is our expectation the moment that we post a video.
We think it's going to go viral. We think it's going to pop off. We spent seven hours filming and editing and all these things.
And this is what ends up happening. But here's the actual reality of what it's like to be a content creator. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. And especially if you decide to do video, it's not an easy job.
And here's the truth. It's never been easier to start a channel and it's also never been harder to grow one. Easier because there's so many people like me, like you, whatever else that post videos online sharing to people how to actually grow a YouTube channel, how to be successful on social media, but it's also never been harder to actually grow one because we all have instant gratification that it's gonna work right away and that's simply not true.
That's why before we get started in the tactics and the tools and everything, I want to walk you guys through the valleys of death that you guys are going to experience during your creator journey. So let's go through it each one by one. Number one, there's going to be people who just never start their channel.
They're always going to be stuck in this valley of death because they wait for the perfect opportunity, they wait for the perfect moment, they wait for the perfect niche, they wait for... So long to the point where they never start their channel even though years have passed on now There's going to be some people who get through this valley of death and they post a few videos Maybe two three, maybe even six or twelve But then the issue becomes they're not seeing the momentum that they hope that they would right away And so guess what happens they give up and unfortunately a lot of people will find themselves in this valley of death and Very few people crawl out of it Now, for the people who are able to crawl out of this valley of death, then what happens is they start gaining momentum because they finally created enough videos to optimize that data, to understand what works well for them, to figure out what their niche is, and so then they start actually building that traction. But here's the caveat to that.
At any point for any creator, if you do not have the systems and the processes in place to sustain that momentum, What happens is you burn out. I've been here many, many times because I didn't have the right systems and processes in place. Now, when you become that creator who can create those systems and create those rinse and repeatable processes, then the next step is you struggle to stay relevant. Because at some point, yes, you have those rinse and repeat processes that's going to last you a few years of maintaining your channel, but algorithms change. Platforms change, new creators come into the space, and so what you need to do is you need to reinvent yourself every so often, every few years.
And for the creators that are able to last decades, they're the ones that are able to reinvent themselves over and over and over again. Now, how I've broken down this journey is really in three phases. There's those of you who want to start your channel, those of you who want to grow your channel, and those of you who want to scale your channel.
And so regardless of where you're at today, I'm going to give you the tactics to break through each phase so that you can make it to the top 10%. How does that sound? So let's focus on phase one. Those of you who are just starting up your channel, maybe you're not getting the momentum that you're wanting.
Here's what you need to focus on if you are in the startup phase. You want to focus on developing the skill of creating videos. And so you're able to collect the data.
You don't need a perfect niche yet, you don't need the perfect gear yet, you don't need any of that. Focus on building the skill of creating videos. Now, here's what your weakness point is going to be. This is your Achilles heel. If you're not careful, you're going to fall into that valley of death.
You let perfect stop you from getting good. You wait for the perfect moment. You wait for the perfect setup.
You wait for the perfect trend. And guess what? You either never post the video, or you don't post enough videos because you're holding yourself back from even getting good in the first place.
So here's tip number one that I have for you. If you are someone who is struggling to find the perfect niche, to find the perfect topics, then I want you to take a step back and I want you to focus on your target audience instead of hyper focusing on that niche. It sounds counterintuitive but hear me out.
There's a misconception out there that says, hey, I need to know my niche before I can post any videos. I need to do tons of market research before I can post anything because it needs to land, it needs to be perfect, it needs to rank. The truth is, is that your niche will find you after you've collected enough data on what's working and what's not working on your channel.
And you as a creator, you know what topics you like to do best. I'll tell you a personal story. It took me 10 years.
to start up my YouTube channel. I've always wanted to be a YouTuber since high school. Specifically, I wanted to do makeup.
I wanted to be a makeup beauty blogger. I waited 10 years to finally post something. And the moment that I posted my very first makeup tutorial, I realized, oh my gosh, I hate doing this.
Putting on makeup, taking it off, and then putting it on again. Oh my gosh, I hated it. And you know what really sucked? It took me 10 years to figure out that the niche I thought I wanted to do was actually not what I wanted to do at all. And so let that be a lesson to you.
Don't aim for perfection. Just do it. And so what did I do after that pivot?
I pivoted and I thought, you know what, I don't really know my niche yet. I had just quit my corporate job. And so I really want to just post videos for millennials who are one to two years into their corporate job, trying to find their identity. They're going through identity crisis.
And so I think about this person in mind, okay? It's not really niche down yet. It's just a target audience. And what I realized is that this target audience has many different interests. Maybe they're interested in side hustling, career tips.
budgeting tips, staying healthy, all those different things. And so what I did was I started to experiment. And one day I was like, you know what? I think that this person might be interested in social media. And so I finally posted a video that seemed out of the blue at the time.
It was my first video about Instagram. And that video took off. And today it has 6.2 million views on YouTube.
This would not have been possible If I did not give myself the freedom to try different things. Because if you pigeonhole yourself, then you're not going to be able to experiment at all. And later you'll see why this was helpful for me.
Now tip number two, create videos around search-friendly topics. Every person uses the search engine, okay? And YouTube is owned by Google. It has the best SEO ever amongst all the different platforms that exist. Now, the reason why someone will use a search engine is for two things.
They want to solve a problem, or they want to be entertained. Now, for me at the time, I'm not very funny. So I was like, you know what? I'm just going to solve people's problems, and I'll figure out how to entertain them later. And so that's what I did.
And what you have to realize is that that person who's searching for something in the search engine, they have a point A and a point B. They have a pain point that they want to solve, and they have a desired result that they want to achieve. And your content is what's going to bridge that gap.
And so when I think about content ideas, this is what I think about. I think about what are the questions, problems, limiting beliefs, or objections that this person might be going through. And then I brain dump a list of problems, issues, and questions.
Then for each question, problem, limiting belief, objection, whatever it is, I'll then map out at least three video topic ideas for each one. So for example, if one of the problems that you guys are going through, one of the objections that's preventing you from starting your YouTube channel is I don't want to start a YouTube channel because I'm afraid of being on camera. Then I'll think and I'll think about, okay, three video ideas. Number one.
How to grow a YouTube channel without showing your face. That might help this person. Video idea number two. How to get confident being on camera in 30 days or less. That might help that person.
Third video idea. Why you're afraid of putting yourself out there on social media and three ways to overcome it. That might help this person.
And so I go down the rabbit hole of different topics that I might want to create content for based on the questions and problems they might be searching for on YouTube or Google. Now if you need help with this and you're not sure about what people are asking on the internet, here are my favorite free platforms. I go on forums and comment sections. I go into Reddit and I look at the topics and I look at what questions people are asking about.
I go on Quora. I go on Facebook groups, really niche Facebook groups, and I see what people are asking questions on. And one of my most favorite things is going into my competitors'comment sections and seeing what their subscribers are asking as a follow-up to watching their video.
Because that tells me, ah, that's an opportunity for me to tap into that market and tap into that gap. Because clearly there's a demand, and that creator didn't necessarily cover that yet in their video. So that's something that's really helped me over time. Now, if you need even more help, you can then use external plugins like TubeBuddy or vidIQ to find content ideas and topics that people are searching for.
Step one. If you use something like TubeBuddy, you're going to get access to something called Keyword Explorer. And when you have access to this, you go in and you search in your topic. And when I search in the topic, let's say Instagram, what I'll pay attention to is what my weighted score is. TubeBuddy will tell me if my channel does a video on this topic, how well it's really going to do based on the competition.
Now, for my channel specifically, it's telling me, hey, I would actually have a pretty good score, something that I might want to pursue. Then what I do is I go down the rabbit hole further and I look at, okay, what video topics is TubeBuddy recommending me? Because they have so much data on what people are searching for on YouTube and on Google. So then I get content ideas like this, easily, in a few clicks.
I then go down the rabbit hole further and I'm like, hey, it's suggesting that of the topic of Instagram, people are also searching about Instagram captions. So let me double click on that. Boom, now my score has went from good to excellent. because I niche down slightly on that topic. So if I were to do a video about Instagram captions, I would have a pretty fair chance of ranking pretty well.
And so again, I look at what video topics are available to me. And so that is how I can easily find content ideas that are searchable and that I know people are looking for. Now here's a bonus tip.
Let's say you're someone that's like, well, Vanessa, I really want to create videos on topics that are very competitive. So how do I stand out? Two tips that really helped me get my first 100k subscribers. Number one, add the year to the title to increase the relevance. Because even if there is a YouTuber out there that has more views, more subscribers than you, the fact that you added how to do this in 2021 or in 2022 or whatever else, people are going to be more inclined to clicking your video because it's more relevant.
Number two, add a differentiation point. Can you actually get someone the result faster? without a certain pain point, or can it be niched down to a specific sub-segment?
So instead of creating a video about how to meal prep, I'm going to do a video about how to meal prep for busy vegan moms. That might get more clicks than a general video. Second one, let's say you're a gamer, you want to do videos about gaming.
Call of Duty Warzone, very, very saturated on YouTube. What I would do is I would say, Call of Duty Warzone, tips and tricks, For beginners, a specific sub-segment in 2022, relevant for this year, and to make it even more clear, I'll put it in parentheses, updated. So they know, click my video.
It's better than everyone else's. It's relevant. Third one, how to wake up early in the morning.
Very, very popular topic, but I'll say without an alarm. To make it even more better and juicier than all the other titles that they might be stumbling upon. This is how you might be able to stand out as a beginner, and this is how I did it when I started.
Here's another secret sauce tip that I have. The reason why my video has 6.2 million views is because every year I update the year in the title. I posted this video in 2019, and I will spend the time... Thank you!
I will spend the time to go back on that video and say 2020, 2021, Guys, I have been milking this video for four years already. I've made lots of money on this video, not gonna lie, and that's why I keep updating it. Now my bonus tip for you is when you start creating videos, do not mention the year in your actual video.
Think about it. YouTube is an evergreen machine. If you want your videos to last longer, Be more relevant for the future, future-proof it, don't mention the year. And try not to put it in the thumbnail or else you'll have to be like me, going to Canva every single year and updating it. Now, for those of you who are a little bit more advanced, if you want to make your life easier, you could use something like TubeBuddy.
called bulk editing and so what I'll do is I'll actually go into this feature and hit find and replace text and I'll literally be like okay to buddy tell me all the videos where I said this year in the title and in the description and then replace it with the new year hit a button done all my videos are updated but back then I did it manually so you know this is the plug right there Third tip for you beginners right here. Keep it simple. Complexity is the enemy of execution. I'll repeat that.
Complexity is the enemy of execution. There's a big misconception. I won't get...
views if I don't have the best equipment. Here's the truth. You want to see what's working and not working and then invest in the equipment that you want. A mistake that I made when I started is I thought I needed the best lighting so I spent $300 on lighting equipment. Filmed a few videos and realized that I didn't have the best lighting equipment.
So I started to invest in the equipment that I wanted. I started to invest in the equipment that I wanted. So I started to invest in the equipment that I wanted. So I started to invest in the equipment that I wanted. So I started to I realized I hate this equipment.
I way prefer daylight lighting. And so I wasted $300. Now here's the simple gear list.
Ask yourself three questions. Can people see you? Can people hear you? And are you making your life easier when it comes to filming?
I literally use this setup right here for my half a million subscriber YouTube channel. This is all I use now. And it works perfectly fine for me.
Now, we've talked about a few valleys of deaths, okay? We talked about never starting and always giving up. Now let's talk about the next phase, which is when you enter a period of growth.
Your focus is to stand out and keep up with the competition. But here's your Achilles heel, here's the problem. You have no systems to keep up with the growth and the momentum.
And that becomes an issue of you being consistent on your channel. And so, tip one, you want to double down on what's working on your channel right now, especially if you're in this phase. Remember, earlier on, I talked about how I was creating videos for a wide target audience, doing a bunch of videos here and there.
And then suddenly, I had a video that picked up better than others. It doesn't have to be viral. It just has to be a video that's getting more views than average. Now, I didn't really catch on to the trend. And so what I did was I continued to post my random videos like I always did.
And as you'll notice, the views were just average. This is a recent screenshot. So back then, it was even less views.
Then I asked myself, OK, what if I... if I just double down on this one topic and see what happens. Let's just see what happens.
Boom, the moment I doubled down, my views accelerated, and this got me to my first 100K subscribers in less than a year because I doubled down on what was working. Now, I want you to imagine this scenario. Imagine getting the best sushi sample as you're walking down the street, and you're like, damn, this is good.
And so then you go into the restaurant expecting more sushi, but you see fries, burgers, steak, burritos, and you're disappointed. So what do you do? You leave the restaurant.
This is how someone might feel after they've watched an amazing video of yours, and they go to your channel, and they don't see similar content of that nature. That's why you're not getting the subscribers. that's not why you're not getting more views.
It doesn't matter if you have a viral video. What matters is what you do with it. It doesn't matter if you have a video that's picking up. It matters what you do with it.
And so keep that in mind. Now, tactic number two, you want to know your analytics at this point and understand how you can optimize your videos better. And so the few metrics that matter the most is really this funnel. And if you go into your creator studio, YouTube will literally show this funnel to you. you.
You want to ask yourself, what are your impressions like? How many people saw your video on their feed? They didn't click on it yet.
They just saw it in passing. That tells you whether or not search is doing really well for you or if the algorithm's just in your favor. It'll tell you a lot of things when you dig deep into this data. Then of those people who saw your video in passing, how many of them actually clicked on the video?
That is your click-through rate. Average about 3% to 5%. If you can get past 5%, 6%, 7%, 8%, 10%, you really want to double down on that style of thumbnail because it's clearly working for you.
Then of those people who click the video, people can click the video and they can click out, how many people actually viewed your video? That's where the views come from. Then of those people who viewed the video, how long did they watch the video for?
That's your view duration. So let's say your video is 10 minutes long. and your average view duration is five minutes, that means on average people are only watching half of your video.
That's what view duration is. And then, how many people are binge-watching your content? How many total minutes have you accumulated in your channel?
That tells you whether or not are people staying on. And by knowing these analytics, you're able to reverse-engineer your goals. So, for instance, if you are someone who wants to have more views, your gear, the equipment you use, doesn't matter. What matters is your topic, your title, and your thumbnail.
When we talked about topics, I talked about doing search-friendly topics. Check. Title. I shared some hacks on how to make your title stand out.
Check. For a thumbnail, you're going to want to click, you're going to want to see the click-through rate and see how you're doing and really test your thumbnails to see what's actually driving the clicks. Now, if you want to take it a step further, you could pay for something like TubeBuddy, get their license. well, they'll actually tell you which thumbnails you should improve on.
TubeBuddy will tell you, this video is getting a lot of views, but the click-through rate is lower than average, so you have an opportunity to improve something here. And then what you can do further is you can A-B test thumbnails if you want to get into a more advanced territory. Now, I didn't do this when I started, so don't worry about it if this is not something that you're ready for yet. But this is available to creators if you want to dig deep on the data and optimize.
Now... If you are someone who wants to have more watch time, more view duration, this is what you have to focus on. A strong hook. How are you hooking people to actually watch the rest of your video?
If your intro is over one minute long, to me, I feel like that's too long already. People have the attention span of a goldfish on YouTube, okay? They're going to click out.
Secondly, are you being concise? If you are rambling in your video, you're taking very long to get to the point. How annoyed do you get when you're like, oh my God, I clicked this video and they're taking forever to actually give me the good stuff?
You're gonna click out. Engaging, how engaging is your video? This is when you wanna focus and experiment with video editing styles, the environment, B-roll, all those different elements to make your videos engaging that will cause someone to keep watching. And if you are someone who wants more watch time, optimize your playlist, make it very clear to people. If you like this video, you'll love these videos.
And a bonus tip that I have for you that's worked really well on my channel is making your videos episodic. So very similar to watching Netflix, you want people to binge watch your content. So what I'll do sometimes in my videos is I'll say, hey, last week we talked about hashtags, this week we're going to talk about captions. And so they're going to know that, hey, a previous video existed.
And then at the end of that video, I might tease my next video and say, hey, if you like this video, next week we're going to talk about Instagram Stories. So hit the subscribe button, hit the notification button, and I'll see you next week. And so that causes people to want to watch more.
And this has dramatically increased my watch time by doing this. Well, I hope you are enjoying today's session. And I wanted to let you know that if you are loving content like this, then you definitely need to go to 21videotips.com where you can actually get 21 more video marketing tips just like this from industry experts like Patrick Bet-David, Vanessa Lau, Pat Flynn, and Alex Hermosi, and so many amazing video marketers of our day. They're sharing their best kept business building secrets inside of this masterclass and free downloadable guide. So just head over to 21videotips.com to get instant access for free and learn how you can level up your business and brand.
That's 21videotips.com. Now let's get back into it. today's content.
Third tactic, if you're at this stage, is create a production cadence. Remember, we talked about the Achilles heel being the fact that you don't have the process and systems in place, and so then you burn out and you're not able to be consistent on your channel. So what do you do? Easy, time block. You can either bake or you can batch.
So when I talk about batching, take, oh, two to three weeks of the quarter and film as many videos as you can so you can get it taken care of. This is really helpful, especially if you're a business owner. Or you can bake it into your schedule.
This is what I like to do. It just works better for me, is I block off specific days of the week to dedicate to content. So I'll block off Thursdays and Fridays to film videos.
You could also do a combination of both. If you want to bake it into your schedule, make it something that you exercise on. Filming is kind of like fitness, to be honest. You're able to block specific days and batch a few videos so that you're not going to ever run out of content And for those weeks where you want to take a vacation you want to take a day off You absolutely can what I want you guys to know though is you can't copy and paste someone's workflow That's the biggest mistake you can make as a creator.
Because I see so many copy and paste other people's workflows, it doesn't work for them, and then all of a sudden they think that they're a bad creator because it didn't work. When in reality, this is a very, very specific career path, and every creator has different strengths and weaknesses. And so you need to be able to create a workflow that works for you and give yourself permission to do that.
It took me a year and a half to find my workflow, okay? And so it's normal if you haven't found it just yet. What I will do today, though, is I'm going to give you examples of workflows that work for me, and you can take the best bits of it to implement it into your cadence.
So here's my Airtable. This is how I map out my content, giving you guys the full behind the scenes. You don't have to use Airtable. You can use Asana, Trello, anything that is Kanban style.
What I'll do is anytime I have a content idea, maybe I watched a movie, read a book, attended a conference, or I'm just sitting down brainstorming, I'll put all of my ideas in this queue. It's just ideas, nothing else. And then on a separate day, when I want to get serious about actually scripting, I'll look at this queue and I'll see which ones are really, really interesting to me.
Which ones actually have legs? What do I actually want to film? Then I start scripting the video. And when you actually open one of these, it's going to open this thing where I can just bullet point script my video or if it's a video that I want to prep more for, I'll write something longer. It really depends on the video.
There's no right or wrong when it comes to scripting. And by the way, I get asked this a lot. I don't use a teleprompter.
Next, I then film the video. And filming, to me, takes like an hour, two hours. Really depends on the video.
And then finally, I will bring it to editing. Now, I have a video editor. But even if you're editing your own videos, this is something that would be very helpful for you to keep track of. And if you do work with a video editor, here's something that's worked really well for me. www.frameio.
It saved me so much time in video briefing because what happens is my video editor, they'll send me the video and then on the side, I will leave my comments and it'll automatically timestamp them so that when we communicate, it's clear and it is concise and there's a steady stream of workflow here. And so this is definitely the GOAT if you work with a video editor. Highly recommend it. Now after that... I then put it into SEO, what I like to call optimizing the actual video.
I look at the title. Is it fine? I look at the description.
I put in the chapters. I put in the cards, the end screens, all the things that make up actually uploading the video. I also use TubeBuddy just to figure out the keywords, something as simple as this. I get help.
I don't do this on my own. I just use the plug-in. I do what the plug-in tells me. At a half a million subscribers, I still do this.
And then finally, I upload the video. And then I have a workflow after that too. So this is my promotion workflow. The moment a video goes up, what we'll do is within the first 24 hours, we're going to promote it in the community post so my subscribers know that I have a new video coming out. What we like to do is we like to put a GIF so that people can see kind of the climax of that video and really bait them into watching.
I also promote the video on Instagram stories so that my followers know that, hey, I dropped a new video. And then I always comment engage within the first 24 hours. so that YouTube can see that there's a lot of activity happening, which may increase the chances of it being thrown out in the algorithm a lot more.
Now, here's a little bonus tip for you. If you know that a lot of your audience members watch videos on mobile, we like to use something called Link Twin. It's free.
It allows us to create a deep link so that when someone's clicking the link on mobile, it's going to open up directly in the YouTube app. Because here's what happens. You promote something on Instagram. Everyone can put this out now. You don't need 10k followers to have the links.
But the problem is if you just take the link from the actual YouTube video, if someone wants to engage with your content, they want to subscribe, they want to show you love, boom, they have to subscribe, they have to sign in. And so that's going to block them from doing anything to really show love to your video. So what I do is I use the Linktwin link. And that way, they can go straight into the YouTube app, they can subscribe, they can comment, they can like, they can do all those things. Reducing friction matters when you promote your videos.
And that's something that I like to do in my workflow. And then everything that I talk to you guys, I put it into Asana, I then schedule everything, I have it all listed out, so when I'm a solopreneur, it's easy for me to keep track of, but when I hire a team member, I can easily reassign those tasks to them. This is literally what's in our Asana board right now.
And the reason why I'm sharing this with you guys is because when you decide to start a YouTube channel, you are essentially deciding to start a production company. Treat it with the same respect as you would a business because it is one. And especially if you are a business owner, this is going to be your biggest Achilles heel if you don't figure it out. Now, we talked about the valleys of death, we talked about how to overcome that burnout period, but how do you actually reinvent yourself if you're struggling to stay relevant?
Let's talk about phase three, scaling. Your focus at this point is to sustain the growth and continue to expand your YouTube channel. Your Achilles heel, what's gonna be your biggest point of weakness, is doing the same thing over and over and over again.
Your subscribers are going to get bored, you're going to get stale. It is going to happen. It might not be right now, but it might be in a few years where the platforms are changing, algorithms are changing, consumer preferences are changing.
You need to reinvent yourself. So how do you do it? Well, here's how I do it. Number one, get off of YouTube.
Go beyond YouTube. And Sean talked about this earlier on about short-form video. Long-form content for my business is the kingpin to our content strategy. Every single week, I spend the dedication and the time to film one YouTube video and also one long-form newsletter that connects my audience with me. Now, I'm tired, I don't want to be on all these platforms, so since I already did the work on these long-form pieces of content, what we'll do is we'll break those pieces into short form.
Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, you name it. And it looks something like this, very easy. I posted a video a few years ago where I shared five tips on what posts convert on Instagram. I then took those five tips and then turned it into a carousel. And then what I did afterwards is I took those tips and I turned them into short form videos that I can then put on other platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, whatever else.
And so I'm not doubling my work and coming up with more content ideas. I'm stretching my reach so I can reach new audiences on different platforms who may not have seen my videos before. Because some people, they don't want to watch a 15 minute video to get to know you.
Maybe they just want to watch a 15-second one. Maybe they want to swipe through the carousel and read. Think about accessibility and think about how different people have different ways of consuming content, and that will make you an A-plus creator when you think about it in that lens. Tactic number two, don't just build an audience.
Build a community. This is going to be extremely, extremely important. Because one thing I want you guys to think about is if the dollar were to collapse, Dollar doesn't mean anything, we head into a new currency. Or if all platforms were to go bust, YouTube disappears, Instagram disappears, everything, we head into Web3, there's different platforms that exist.
The only thing that you are going to have to rebuild yourself is your relationships. And there is a vast difference between having half a million subscribers and half a million community die-hard fans of yours that will go wherever you go. Let's say you decide one day, I don't want to be a YouTuber anymore.
I want to launch an e-commerce product. I want to do something else. I want to do software.
I want to do whatever. I want to write a book. You want to make sure you have strong enough relationships for people to want to buy those things, to want to follow you wherever you go.
And so here are some things that we do really simply to really boost that relationship with our audience. Subscriber shout outs. This is something you can do today. We noticed there's so many people that show love to our videos.
How can we give back? How can we make them feel seen, appreciated, loved and heard? We post their comments in the back of our videos so that they know that we see them.
We do content polls. We engage people, we interact with people, we want people to be involved in the creation of our content now. We also started a weekly newsletter series called the CEO Newsletter.
A lot of people, my subscribers, love to see my videos, but they want to see the behind the scenes of those videos. They want to know what really goes on behind that lens. They want to know what's going on with my business, with my life.
And so we started to create this newsletter series, and on a weekly basis, we have upwards to 30% open rates because they love this content. It gives them access to me. One thing we also want to experiment more this year and next year is doing more live streams and private connection calls.
We focus so much on serving our clients, but what I want to do is I want to start actually hosting Zoom meetups with my subscribers, with people who follow me, and just to hang out with them. Why do they have to pay me to do that? How can I actually build that relationship today? These are things we're looking forward to doing.
Now, the third tactic is breaking the pattern if you're going through a plateau right now. This has helped me a lot actually revive my channel a bit because I went through a plateau. For three years, I was just sitting down doing the same video, same environment, same everything. And my retention dropped off, my engagement dropped off, so I thought to myself, what do I need to do? What I realized is that at some point in your journey, you're going to have a lot of raving fans that love you, but your videos alone aren't going to be enough.
They're going to want to have more access. They want to see more things. They want to see more of your life. That's where searchable content, searchable topics aren't going to be enough. You might want to switch those things up.
And so what we do is we decided, hey, Let's actually add a few more topics to the channel to keep things interesting. Instead of just niching down on Instagram, let's niche up and share more things. And what I realized is over time, my audience has really grown and matured as well.
When I first started, I was attracting a lot of people who were just starting out in business. But a few years later, those same people are now wanting more advanced strategies, they're wanting to start businesses, they're wanting to do all those things. So how can I, as a creator, grow with those people?
Keep that in mind. You don't even need to change up your topics if you don't want to. You can just change the delivery.
So what I did was I changed the environment in which I filmed my videos. No longer did I just do sit-down videos in my office, same setting every single time. I started vlogging and showing people aspects of my home.
I started to film videos outside of my home. I started to introduce my pets. I started to introduce my boyfriend.
All these different things in my videos to build that connection. This is also a great time to experiment with your video editing. For us, we switched video editors.
And it made all the difference to really reviving our channel and reaching a new audience of people who are more engaged with a specific type of editing style. And then lastly, we just got more personal. Just started vlogging. Started to actually show people what it's really like to start a channel, what it's really like to actually be me.
Because at that point, you have raving fans. They don't care about the searchable topics, they care about you. Right?
And so, these are the valleys of death that we just walked through. And for each tactic that I shared, it's very unique to what phase that you're in. So if you're not in phase three, you don't have to worry about that stuff.
Focus on phase one and two. Okay? But so far, we've talked about all the valleys of death and all the tactics that you can do today to prevent falling into those valleys of death.
Now, I have a question for you. How many people know this guy? MKPhD? Marcus Brownlee, yeah? Lots of people know him.
He's one of the most famous tech YouTubers on the platform. Here's his 100th video that he posted 13 years ago. I took this screenshot like a few days ago, so it has 1.4 million views, but I guarantee you, 13 years ago, he probably had no views on this.
Why do I show you this? I show you this because if you are someone in this room who's posting one video a week... And you give up after three months, I want to remind you that you've really only given up after 12 videos.
I know that when you're doing the video, it seems like a lifetime, but the algorithm doesn't care about that. Your audience doesn't care about that. They only see 12 videos. So does it make sense to give up?
No! And so Marcus Brownlee posted over, well over a hundred videos before he saw success. Today he has over 15 million subscribers.
You can rest. I highly encourage resting and protecting your mental health as a creator. But what I don't encourage is giving up. Because as you can see through these valleys of deaths, starting, growing, and scaling a YouTube channel takes time. And remember, the information that you learn at a conference like this one is useless.
Unless you take action on it. So whatever you learn today, tomorrow, the next day, Take action, take notes, take the best nuggets of wisdom, and start applying it to your businesses and to your videos. Make this your year.