When you first start making YouTube videos it can be frustrating because your channel grows slowly. There’s a lot of reasons for this, but some of them have to do with a few of the tips that Bryant shares in this video.

If you are a new YouTube creator and you’re trying to grow but you’re struggling to get those views, those subscribers, typically there’s a few common reasons why that might be the case. And today I want to introduce you to my friend Bryant who will share some of those with you, because my voice is shot and you might be able to tell. I’m sick.

For this video I asked him, what are the main two things that you see new creators often miss when they’re first starting and growing their YouTube channel? And then how do they go about fixing those problems? Here he is to those questions for you.

The Two Ingredients

The two ingredients, very simple, knowledge and strategy. And that may sound very simple, and it’s really not complicated, but it’s not necessarily easy to get it right. What I find in most cases is that creators lack of knowledge of self, lack of knowledge of purpose, or at least an established purpose, and lack of knowledge when it comes to the YouTube and Google platform.

Knowledge of Self

Let’s start with knowledge of self. Why is that so important? Well, my good friends Sun Tzu would say that a general or a leader that knows himself and knows his enemy, in this case, the enemy is not people, but it’s the problem you’re trying to solve on YouTube with your channel. If you know those two things, you will never be endangered in 100 encounters. You will always win.

And you really have to start there, because the better you know yourself, the better you’re going to understand what type of content makes you happy, and most of you know that Tim and I have both been YouTube certified in the area of audience growth. And one of the first things they teach us is that you have to keep yourself as a creator or happy. But if you don’t know yourself, if you don’t know what makes you tick, you’re not going to know necessarily the type of content that’s going to suit you best.

And one of the best ways you can solve the knowledge of self problem is to go to a website called HumanMetrics.com. You can also go to 16Personalities.com and take what’s called the Myers-Briggs test. It’s going to give you at the end of that test a printout of the things that you would be best at doing. Now that’s focused on career, but you can take that information and relate it to what you’re doing on YouTube.

Understanding Your Purpose

Understanding your purpose, and this is important for two reasons. One, you have to know what drives you, what gets you out of bed every morning so that you can stay in the fight when it gets hard. But your audience also needs to know why you do what they do so they can align themselves with you. You will hear Tim at the end of his videos often say that I do this because I believe you truly have a message that can change lives if you can just get that message in front of people. And that’s what drives Tim. And I guarantee you in some of the dark times when our views and our subscribers and our revenue are not exactly what we want them to be, that purpose keeps us in the fight.

My purpose, to have a positive impact on every life that I reach via social media. So when things aren’t necessarily going my way, I never lose sight of my purpose, which is to have a positive impact on your life, to help you in some way, shape, or form. It keeps me in the fight. It keeps me in the game when I’m tired and when things aren’t necessarily panning out the way I want them to. But more importantly, that sense of purpose is going to help you articulate that to an audience who is now going to want to be a part of what you’re doing.

Platform

In this particular case, YouTube and Google is where we’ll focus. And I find that most people don’t understand things like SEO. They don’t understand how to build content in a way that’s going to be easily searchable, that’s going to make people want to subscribe to it. And understanding how YouTube’s platform promotes content and why it promotes the content it promotes. So instead of just flying blind and throwing up content, now that you understand how the platform works, especially for those of us who are certified, and understand the very detailed inner workings of the platform, we can position content much more easily.

Now, not all of you will have the opportunity to get certified. But you can learn from people who are certified, people like Derral, people like Tim, people like myself through the books that we’ve written and the academies that we all run to help out YouTubers.

Strategy

Next up, number two, strategy. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re not going to know when you get there. And most every YouTuber that I’ve worked with and coached, and really pretty much everyone that I coach in any area of life, they have this flurry of activity with no goal or objective that they’re aiming at. And that’s what a strategy is going to help you develop.

A strategy is not a plan, by the way. A strategy is not saying, I’m going to upload comedy videos every Tuesday through Thursday at 3 PM for the next year. That’s not a strategy. That’s a system, if you will.

A strategy in its simplest form is a decision. It’s choice. It’s about deciding where you’re going to play, and more importantly, where you’re not going to play. And here’s the interesting thing to encourage you a little bit. Almost every major corporation and company has got this wrong at some point, whether it’s Coca-Cola, whether it’s McDonald’s, and even GE. So don’t think that you’re not prone to making this mistake, and don’t beat yourself up if you’ve made the mistake, because the biggest people in the world have done it as well.

What are my core competencies?

Again, something that knowledge of self is going to help you understand. Well, I know I’m good at coaching. I’ve been doing it for over 20 years. So I can focus on helping people giving the messages that impact their life in a positive way. And that’s where I’m going to play. I’m not going to play in the overly silly YouTube gaming content because I’m not going to be good at it. And I wouldn’t enjoy it. So that’s strategy.

Who are you going to serve?

Who is it that you’re looking to get your content in front of? If you’re a gamer, most of the gamers I work with will say, I just want to make gamers happy. It’s not specific enough. You have to make content such that people will want to be a part of what you’re doing. Thus, it needs to be very specific so that when the person who it’s made for sees it, they’ll say, that content was made for me. I’m subscribing to this channel because I believe in their message.

What problem are you solving?

At the end of the day, our content has to be more than just something that makes us happy. It has to solve a problem for someone else if we’re going to want them to commit their time. Because remember, people may not be giving us money, but they are giving us something equally or even more valuable, which is their time. And if we’re going to expect people to spend time with us, we have to be solving a problem for them, whether it’s helping them build a family, whether you’re a DIY channel that’s helping them do something they don’t know how to do. Or maybe you are a PewDiePie type channel where you’re just bringing people laughter and fun to help them forget about the troubles of their day.

These are the things that you can’t miss if you really want to see the growth and really the value that you want your channel to have. And you really want to have impact. You’ve got to have the right knowledge, and you have to implement and put in place a proper strategy. And I want to help you do that.

Remember, there’s tons of materials that can help you learn the platforms and help you build a strategy. Tim’s book, for example, 30 Days to a Better YouTube Channel is amazing. It should be mandatory reading for everybody that starts a YouTube channel as a partner. But also, I want to give you access to my eBook, completely for free. I typically charge 20 bucks for it. It’s called the YouTube gamers survival guide. I’m going to put gamers in parentheses, because this book has literally helped gamers, it’s helped musicians, it’s help artists. It’s even helped foodies who go around and review different restaurants.

I built that book when I was exclusively coaching gamers, and I’ve pivoted now to help more small businesses and doing consulting outside of the gaming space. So don’t be put off by the fact that the book has the word gamer in it. It will absolutely add value to your life and to your channel. And you can get it absolutely for free by going to my website. You can find a link in the description and joining our mailing list.

And if you are trying to figure those things out on your channel right now, read the comments that other people are leaving for you down there. You will learn a lot from the Video Creators community. I do every single video. You guys are awesome.

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