I have seen creators and business owners make these YouTube mistakes, and not see the kind of growth they can have. It is simple enough to fix these and grow your channel and business.
Check out what these mistakes are and how you can avoid them.
1. Making Random Videos No One Wants
Imagine you are a brand agency owner and you want to attract clients with your videos. You know that your customers need their brand to be seen. With this in mind, you set out to make a video on ‘how to make sure that your brand is seen by people’.
Nothing wrong with that but chances are that a potential customer will not be attracted to your video. Because it has what they need, but it does not have what they want.
They need brand awareness but they want revenue growth. So, make a video on how to grow your revenue, and then link how a powerful brand can contribute to revenue growth. Think of other video topics with this mindset.
2. Not Making Videos That People Are Actively Searching For
Use the existing momentum around a topic for your channel’s growth.
Do that by researching the keyword volume for a topic. Go after a topic that has a decent number of searches, and then gradually move to a slightly more competitive keyword.
Use a tool like Keywords Everywhere to find out the volume i.e. the number of people searching for your chosen topic.
3. Using Weak Thumbnails
Thumbnails are an important part of engagement on YouTube. If people don’t click on your thumbnails, they won’t watch your videos.
Make sure that your thumbnails entice people to click on your video. The quality of thumbnail is a function of both design and the words you choose to put on the thumbnail.
Also be sure to make sure that words on the thumbnail represent what is inside the video, because you can fool people once but user trust is more important than one time click. So be smart, be creative but also be honest.
4. Not Experimenting Enough
Most people have more than one skill and several interests but they only showcase one of them because they want to be perceived as an expert.
Better to explore and experiment first before you settle on one theme.
5. Not Being Consistent With Publishing Videos
If you only publish one video every two months, it is tough to get traction.
You don’t need to publish every day but publishing once or twice a week on a predictable schedule will help your audience anticipate and expect your new video and is good for engagement.
6. Not Going Deep Enough
Don’t just make any video. Make it better than any other video on the same topic.
Search for your topic on YouTube and then watch the top 5 videos among search results. Note what you like in each of those videos. Then use all those things that you liked in those videos in your videos.
Don’t worry too much about making short videos. In fact, longer videos perform better in search. Start with about 9 minutes and then experiment with an 18 minutes format.
Stop making these mistakes and you will see an uptick across key metrics like clicks, views, subscribers, engagement, and conversions. And, as a result, your channel will grow and you’ll see more opportunities come your way.