Transform your YouTube Channel from Meh to Wow!

Do you wish you got more traction from YouTube? Either you’re too unsure to start or you’ve thrown some videos up there, but they haven’t done as well as you’d hoped…. The noise you can hear is crickets, rather than the postman knocking at the door to deliver your gold YouTube play button….. Sound familiar?

Today I’m going to show you how to make your YouTube channel go from meh to wow! To finally get those views that you really should be getting.

Let’s start at the top, your welcome video and your channel art are really important. We’ll address them one at a time.

Until we’re Kim Kardashian or similar, our content needs to give value rather than just be a glimpse into our life. It needs to help someone else. Either it gives them information or makes them feel less alone. All the content that we put out there into the world should have a purpose. Even if it’s just to get engagement, in this case it must include a call to engagement.

People’s first impression is so important, so let’s look at Channel Art;

* Channel art

When someone lands on your channel what’s the first thing that they see? Your channel art. So that needs to give the right impression, be correctly sized and show a clear benefit. What is the person going to get from your videos? Simply using your blog/website header isn’t good enough. Especially if it doesn’t have a tagline. It needs to have your business name and a sentence explaining the benefit to the viewer.

Then it needs to say how often you upload. Think of Youtube being like a TV show. People subscribe to you and they start coming back when they know you’re going to have an upload. Help them know when this is by putting, for example, uploads every Sunday or uploads every Monday at 4pm. This shows people that they can rely on you and they will get used to returning to your channel for your latest upload. People don’t want to invest time in you if they think you’re going to be a bit flaky and not going to keep showing up for them.

Sometimes the Channel Art templates can go a bit awry, but you can’t actually download one straight from youtube, which is amazing. You leave the top and bottom blank and just put your banner over the top in Canva (or a design programme of your choice!). It’s will be absolutely perfect. Simply download it and then upload it to youtube and it’s done. You will have no sizing issues if you get your template from youtube directly.

* Welcome video

Now you know how important the channel art is, let’s talk about your welcome video. This is possibly the next thing a new potential subscriber will look at when they land on your channel for the first time.

Now, if you want to watch a welcome video, that’s nothing like I’m going to tell you to create but which is amazing – go and watch Casey Neistat’s, because that’s crazy good. Totally amazing. But he’s Casey Neistat. He can do whatever he wants. He could go on video with a potato on his head and it would be fine. He would probably rack up a couple of hundred thousand views. This can be the problem, we might watch someone well known doing a certain type of video and think we can do the same and get the same result. No, you can’t.

If no-one knows who you are, then you need a welcome video that does the following things.

• States who you are and why you’re credible. Why should someone listen to you? Even if it’s just that you founded a blog. You’ve got a website on the internet, that’s enough to give you some credibility.

• Shows the content benefit. Clearly showing why should they listen to you. What will they get out of it?

• It needs to let people know how often you upload videos.

• Include a call to action to subscribe to the channel, but then also a second call to action to go somewhere else. So, for example, you might say subscribe to my channel, and then you might say for more information or help why not join my facebook group or go to my blog.

Ideally you want to keep all of that under two minutes. Otherwise it will lose it’s snappiness and most of the viewers too.

Those five things all rolled up into one, will go something like this.

‘Welcome to my YouTube channel. I’m a blogger and author. I post videos about business, blogging, social media and mindset, every single Monday. You’ll learn how to grow your audience and your business from my channel. Be sure to subscribe for new content and comment below to introduce yourself’.

I can say that in probably even less than a minute. I could just put a video of me with my daughter enjoying a day out, it’s not relevant. So if someone subscribes to my channel based on that welcome video they might not be interested in most of the content I do share.

Having this script that lets you share; who you are, why your credible, how you can help you, how often you’re going to upload and asking people to subscribe will be more beneficial to you and the subscribers.

• Then add B-roll. This is footage that you’re going to use in your welcome video as well as you talking directly to camera. B-roll is the video of you playing with your kids, or the busy town, or you typing on your keyboard or talking to a client. Other scenes that are relevant to your story/niche/content. So that maybe you cooking in the kitchen or a close up of you chopping something, if you’ve got a food channel.

• Music is always great to add in especially over the B-roll sections, but make sure your speaking sections are clear.  

The next thing is to think about is the content that you’re delivering. So Youtube recommend channels mix these types of content on their channels. You might find you do more of one type and that’s fine.

Types of video content

There are three main types of content on YouTube. Hub, Hero and Help.

• Your Hero content is a big life event, something that doesn’t happen all the time. It grabs people’s attention. Engages potential customers with moments of great creativity. This is campaign driven so happens a couple of times a year. Think product launches or seasonal storytelling, a pregnancy announcement or you running the London marathon, for example.

• The hub content keeps your audience coming back for more. Content that people value and want to actively receive. This is episodic, helping to build an ongoing relationship with your audience.

• The help content will answer your audience’s questions. Content will be based on the subjects people are searching for. Think ‘how-to’ or tutorial videos.

When you start your channel no-one knows who you are and so people aren’t necessarily going to watch a ‘Day in the life of Linda’. They want to know something specific. They’ve gone to Youtube, they’ve typed in ‘how to do X’ and they’ve got all these results and hopefully they’ll find you. The quickest way to grow your channel at the start of your YouTube journey is to create helpful content. At least until you get traction. You need to provide the content that people are searching for.

Remember – Nobody gives a rat’s ass about ‘a day in the life’ video if they don’t know who you are.

Your content needs to solve a problem.

I’ll be back next week with the next step, tags, keywords, and getting your videos seen.

I’d love to know if you’ve learned any tips you’re going to try out on your own channel?