If you’ve been getting e-mails from me for a little bit now, you’ll know my team and I go through an 8-week program called Video Labs with a small group of 20 YouTube creators who want to up their game.

One of my favorite parts of Video Labs is at the end of the course when each creator now knows so much about YouTube and the way it works that they’re able to answer questions our livestream audience has completely on their own.

We opened the first Video Labs session at the beginning of 2020 and are now at the end of it. I had 6 of the creators in my group share their top tips for YouTube Growth after coming out of their Video Labs class and this is what they had to say.

  1. Learn how to hold your audience’s attention. In our Video Labs class, we teach creators how to study their audience retention graphs in their analytics. This is one of the most helpful tools for YouTube creators because it literally tells you what points in the video your audience is interested and where they’re dropping off. You can use the information from this to adjust how you’re making videos and make them even better for your audience.
  2. Narrow down your niche. It’s easy to look at what bigger creators are doing and try to emulate that. What works for them may not work to you, though. You’re not them. Focus on speaking to an audience of one. You will reach a mass audience by making content for people one at a time. You want people to make them feel like your content is for them. You need to know what that person is looking for and make content for them.
  3. Determine what value you are offering. It’s easy to make videos for the sake of making videos. Maybe you’re making what’s fun for you (which there is nothing wrong with) or you’re doing what you see other creators doing. But if you want to up your growth on YouTube, you’ve got to make content that is valuable to the viewer – not just to you.
  4. Utilize grouping elements in your analytics. YouTube analytics gives you the ability to group different videos together to A/B test what is working better in one video vs. another. Creator Bailey Sigmon explains more about how she does this above.
  5. Study your audience. It’s hard to feel like this is true, but each view count on your videos are real life human beings. They have stories, feelings, pain points, struggles, and things they want to overcome. The more you can connect with them and learn what they want, the more successful you will be in delivering value to them, serving them well, and growing your channel as a result.
  6. Identify your problems and use that to make a plan. Whether it’s creating stronger hooks, needing stronger branding, creating a channel trailer, etc. if you can identify what areas of your channel need improvement, you can work from there. So many creators continue to search “how to get more subscribers” and aren’t willing to admit that they probably need to be making better content and creating a better channel experience. This stuff is hard work and if you want to be successful, you’ve got to be willing to do it.

This semester’s Video Labs graduates also got the chance to answer some of our podcast audience’s questions. If you want to listen to those or listen to the full podcast, watch above.

I hope these tips help you on your YouTube journey. Hit ‘reply’ and let me know if/how my team and I can help you.

Thanks for reading!

Keep changing lives,

Tim

P.S. Interested in becoming a Video Labs student? We’d love to work with you and on your channel. Find more info on how to register here.

Video Labs Graduate Channels: