2019 was a pretty big year for us here in the Video Creators community.

We had so much client growth happening (because so many of you are crushing it on YouTube!) that I had to onboard several new people this year to give extra support to our clients that we couldn’t offer before.

It’s been an incredible journey getting to grow our team, interact with other creators, and listen to all of the stories of life change happening as a result of your channels.

We’ve learned a lot along the way and I wanted to take today’s e-mail to share the top 7 lessons I’ve learned in 2019 about growing a YouTube channel.

Let me know if any of these resonate with you.

  1. The only thing that matters is what the viewer cares about. Things like tags, descriptions, and keywords really don’t matter. Content is king. (We’d lump titles/thumbnails in with content too.) You can add these if you want, but stop putting your focus there and blaming the “algorithm” when you’re not getting the results you want.
  2. YouTube looks at FAR more data than I ever imagined. There is SO much data YouTube looks at behind the scenes and within our analytics, there is so much data available to us as creators! Don’t worry about all of it – just take advantage of the ones that will help you make better videos (we recommend looking at your CTR, end screen elements shown, and end screen elements clicked to start).
  3. Quantity doesn’t matter as much as quality. Some of the fastest growing channels our team has seen or worked with post 1-2 videos a month. Quantity isn’t the key to YouTube success. It definitely can help your audience know when to expect content from you and create a sense of reliability and trust with your audience, but it doesn’t have to be daily or even weekly. Just focus on making great videos that build interest and are high quality (with story telling elements and creativity).
  4. Your titles and thumbnails to create tension in the brain. It’s pretty easy to get lazy with our titles and thumbnails, but this is the gateway into our videos. It’s like a book cover. People will judge your video based on this, so the title and thumbnail need to tease the story you’re telling and create a question in the viewer’s mind that will be answered with your video. This is more important than ever with YouTube saturated with so much content.
  5. Branding needs to be clearly communicated. I’m not talking about color schemes here. By branding, I mean, who is your channel for and why should people watch your videos? What are your audience’s pain points? What do they want? What is their story? How is this person going to resonate with your content? It’s SO important to know who your audience is and that it is clearly communicated in your channel.
  6. Subscribers don’t matter as much as they used to. While it is nice to have more subscribers and get your first 1,000 to be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program, it’s not the key to success or growth on YouTube. YouTube has gotten really good at surfacing content the viewer likes to see and they feel less of a need to subscribe than they used to. What will actually help you achieve results (and in turn get more subscribers) is by getting people to stay on your videos longer (increasing your watch time) and to get them from one of your videos to another.
  7. Tricks and hacks don’t matter. Making your video file name a keyword doesn’t matter. Nor does putting in the same keyword 15 times. YouTube is highly advanced. It knows exactly what the content is about once you upload the video and it processes. EVERYTHING comes down to the viewer. Optimize for people, not for robots.

As we’re into 2020 now, we’re shifting Video Creators to reflect a lot of these lessons we’ve learned.

We’re very excited to see what results it brings for all of our creators.

Thanks for reading!

Keep changing lives,

Tim

P.S. Still feeling a little lost on how to grow your channel in 2020? We’d love to hop on a consultation call with you and hear more and you and your story. Sign up for one here.

Join us in our next session of Video Labs for personalized training with me and my team: https://videocreators.com/video-labs/