Your YouTube Channel failed to take off? This might be why.

So you started a YouTube channel but now it's not taking off? I’m sharing the real reasons your videos aren’t getting views, your channel isn't gaining subscribers, and it's starting to feeling all that hard work was for nothing. AND! How to fix it... Let’s get your channel working for you! 

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Transcript

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So if you started a YouTube channel but it didn't really take off, like you put a few videos up there and maybe you've been consistent with it or you tried to be consistent with it and then fell off the wagon and you're like, and now what do I do? Like what do I post? What do I change? Is there something I need to fix to make it actually get off the ground and start gaining subscribers and gaining more and more views every time you publish? That's what I want to talk about here in this video. My name is Meredith, and I'm here to help you build your binge-worthy video brand. I'm here to help you look good, sound good, and feel good on camera so that as a business owner, you can create content, build a community, and actually let your content bring you clients, bring you customers, attract the people that want to be in your world, that want to work with you, or even just be in your community. If you've been around for a while, you know that I say that YouTube is the most powerful way to build your audience online. And it's because of two things. Well, it's because of a lot of things, but it's really because of two things. One is because it's a search platform, so it's amazing for discovery, for making it easy for people to discover you as the go-to expert in your niche, but also because of the recommendation algorithm. And that's really the power of YouTube because YouTube it runs on viewer behavior. And so when people are finding you for the first time and they're watching your videos and they're binging your videos, which is what you want to have happen, it tells YouTube that we need to get more people onto your channel. We need to get this person's channel out there to more of these viewers because it's keeping them on the platform. That's what YouTube wants to have happen. So it's almost like, and I love to say that YouTube wants people to watch your videos as much as you want people to watch your videos. If you've put any amount of time or energy into starting a channel, you probably went about it thinking I'm doing all of the right things, right? I'm doing maybe you did a little bit of keyword research, maybe you did a lot of keyword research. I mean, if you're a dork like me, might have done a lot of research. Um, you have your setup, you know, maybe you invested in a bunch of gear, maybe you invested in a fancy camera and lights and a microphone, maybe you downloaded Meredith's Crush It On camera guide. Um, or maybe you're just kind of winging it with um your iPhone and like sitting in front of a window and just making do with what you have. And you probably watched a bunch of other YouTube videos on like how to start a channel, how to launch a channel, what to post, what to say, like how to do thumbnails and how to get your titles just right. I don't know if I've ever talked to anyone who's launched a YouTube channel and not put some time and effort into making sure that that they're doing it right. We all want to do it right. And so when you do it right, and when you think you're doing all the right things and then nothing really happens, you know, like you post your videos and then they get like three views or 12 views, maybe a couple subscribers, one of them is your mom, you know, it's really deflating. Sometimes it seems like you have to be a YouTube guru yourself in order to understand what's going on, what to change, what to fix, what's working, and what's not working. So I want to point out three areas that you can look at on your channel to help you diagnose what is going on, what is working, what is not working, what do I need to change or fix to make the channel actually lift off the ground and actually launch? And this will apply to you whether you have like three videos or 300 videos. But before I get into it, I want to let you know that I have a workshop called Launch Your Darn Channel Already. And yes, that's the actual name. Just launch your darn channel already. It's a free workshop. I will link to it down below. I'm gonna be sharing the seven video launch strategy to launch or relaunch your client attracting YouTube channel. So if you have an online business, if you are a coach, a course creator, a membership site owner, or a service provider, I'm going to hand you the blueprint for launching or relaunching your client attracting YouTube channel. So I'll link to that down below. Now let me share this sort of three-part diagnosis of why if you started a channel, it never actually got off the ground and took off for you. Number one is something that I see with almost every client that I work with when I first start working with them, and I'm taking a look at their channel for the very first time. Almost always, this is what I notice. And that is making videos on topics that you want to be known for. Making videos on topics around your expertise. Hear me out on this. Making topics around your expertise that you know you want to be the go-to expert on that thing. Now, obviously, I know like if you're building your personal brand and you're building your YouTube channel, you want to be the go-to expert in your niche. You want to be that like go-to person in your industry. So it seems obvious that you would make videos on the topics of your expertise. But what I see happening is those topics are things that you know that your ideal clients, customers, and viewers need to know about. But your ideal clients, customers, and viewers don't know that yet. They don't know that they need to know that. They're things that like they would already have to know you, they would already have to be following you, they would already have to like have some kind of inner education on these topics already in order to be interested in clicking play on your videos. So, yes, you want to establish yourself as the go-to expert in your niche, but you don't do that by making videos that you want to be known as an expert for. You do that by becoming the go-to expert on the things your ideal clients, customers, and viewers already want to watch. And this can be tricky because you know what people need to know. Like you know what people need to do to make positive changes in their life, to um to get a raise at work or um get out of a bad relationship or lose weight or whatever it is. Like you know what they need to do, but they're not there yet. And that's why they're looking for an expert. That's why they're looking for somebody to guide them, right? They're searching for solutions to the problems they're actually experiencing. They're not searching for the solutions that they don't know exist yet. And what I see happening a lot of the time with my expert clients is you're making videos around the solutions that your people don't even know that they need yet. And so they're not finding the videos, or if they are finding the videos, they're not clicking play because it's not clicking with them that this is something that they need. So, how do you fix this? Well, you start asking your clients and customers, or I mean, you you know your clients better than any like keyword research tool or or any AI tool. Um, you you know the people that you're working with. So you know the inner workings of what's going on in their head. What are they asking you? What are like the silly uh sort of like surface level worries or fears that they're asking you about or they're like afraid to even ask you about? That's what's going on inside of them that they're going to YouTube and searching how to overcome that thing or how to get rid of that thing or how to deal with that thing and make videos on those topics. And you could still make videos on the topics that you want to be the go-to expert for. That makes total sense. From a personal branding standpoint, that makes total sense. But from a channel growth standpoint, from a YouTube strategy standpoint, you have to meet people where they're at. Start making videos on the topics that people are already searching for, that your ideal clients and customers are already seeking, already wanting to watch. Number two is sort of the flip side of that coin where you're making videos on topics people want to watch and things that they're searching for, but you're not really packaging the video in a way that makes people even know that if they hit play, they were gonna get the answers that they're looking for. So let me kind of explain what I mean here. I'm gonna use an example from a client call that I just had this week. And if you're watching this, you know who you are. She had a video go out around some really specific personal trauma-related uh topics. And there were probably like three really viable, like kind of keywords in there. There was like touching on three really um, like I would call them like really juicy pain points. And that video got like around 1700 views. Her channel has less than 300 subscribers, and most of her videos were getting like in the hundreds, like 50 views here, 120 there. And then she had this one that just like boom out of nowhere, 1700 views. It had just been published like five days before, so it might have got some traffic from search, but it probably like got into it, like it rode an algorithm wave, I like to call it. It rode a wave, and and and YouTube knew like who else to get it in front of, and it just kind of like kept going and going and going. But the very next video that she published got three, three views from 1700 to three. Even if you took the one that was popping off out of it, it's still like way underperformed compared to her regular views. But I could tell right away the likely culprit. The reason why is because the packaging of the video was kind of bland, wasn't very specific, and so it wasn't very like juicy, it didn't look that interesting. What she was talking about in that video was juicy and interesting and really insightful. It was just the packaging of it, the title, the thumbnail, like the packaging as a whole didn't create really any intrigue, or certainly didn't create enough intrigue that her viewers, her previous viewers on her channel, actually were interested enough to hit play. And so it only got three views. So the second kind of diagnosis for you to make is am I even making the video look interesting and intriguing before somebody hits play? Because you could have the best, most juiciest, life-changing content inside of the video. But if no one hits play, they never see it. They never even know. Right? So that the packaging has to be intriguing. I like to say the um thumbnail is there to get people's attention, and then the title is there to generate some interest, and together they create this package of intrigue that makes the right viewer go, oh, I need to click this. I need to watch this video right now. This is gonna be good. Now, topic selection and packaging and title, thumbnail, and like um all of that nerdy little stuff that I love to get into with YouTube is something we are going to cover in the Launch Your Darn Channel workshop. So don't forget to register to that using a link down in the description. And the really good news about that is that it's fixable. You can change your title, you can change your thumbnails after you publish a video. So if you suspect that you have videos that are falling flat simply because the title and the thumbnail just like aren't interesting enough, you can change that and you can start getting views long after you publish just from changing and updating the title and the thumbnail. So we can talk about that on the workshop. But let's get to this third diagnosis because this is something I don't ever see anybody talking about. And I'm not just saying that because it sounds like a juicy hook. I legitimately do not see other YouTube strategists, YouTube educators talking about this. And a couple of weeks ago, I was on Threads and somebody posted something about like they were asking about YouTube Shorts. And if if you've been on my channel for a while, you know I have very strong opinions about whether or not you should post YouTube Shorts on YouTube if you're a business owner trying to use YouTube to grow your business and get clients and customers. But on Threads, somebody asked this question about shorts, and my response was stop doing them. Just don't do shorts on your channel if you want to get views on your long form videos. And someone else chimed in and said, That is wrong advice. You should absolutely be doing shorts. Shorts are the reason why I'm getting views on my long form videos. And I replied, well, YouTube analytics tells a different story. And they replied, my YouTube analytics tell me that I'm right. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it. So I didn't reply back because I I had to like step back and go, first of all, I'm not gonna argue with strangers on the internet. Second of all, I think we're both right. Like one of my philosophies is look at your analytics. Let your metrics help you make decisions about what to do or not do on your channel, what to do next, what to change, what to tweak, what's working, what's not working. Your analytics tell you really everything you need to know. But remember, like I said, sometimes it feels like you have to be a YouTube strategist to even like know what's going on. I'm the kind of dork that loves to look at those things. And I'm thinking about my own analytics and my clients' analytics. And I know looking at those analytics, that YouTube Shorts for a business YouTube channel is one of the worst things that you can do if you want to get views on your long-form content. The analytics I've seen back that up 100%. What this person was saying is that the analytics that they see show the opposite. And I realized that we're talking about two completely different strategies for two completely different business models. Here's why this matters for you. If your business model, if the way that you generate revenue and the way that you want to generate more revenue by utilizing YouTube content is through ad revenue, like YouTube ads or working with brands, then your job, your role as a video creator is to make a crapton of content and get people to watch as much of that content as you can. Views, view duration, subscribers. You have to have those high, high, high, high numbers. If you have a crafting channel and you want to generate revenue with ads or sponsored content, then you should be creating a crap ton of shorts. And you should be creating a crap ton of long form videos as well. Your job is to create videos, create, create, create, create. But if you have a knowledge business where you're teaching something or you're helping clients, customers, coaching services, something like that, where you have this like personal brand where you're actually selling something. Your time, you're selling course program information, uh, you know, even like an author if you're selling a book or something. You're selling a deliverable. If you have a business where you're selling a deliverable, your job is to sell the deliverable. So some people, the role of their YouTube channel is the deliverable is the content. For other people, the deliverable is the thing that you're selling. And so the content that you have to create on your channel and the way that you make decisions about what to create, how to create, what format, how much editing has to go into it, has a lot to do with the actual business model. So when you are watching content from the YouTube educators out there, be very discerning about what is the business model that the strategies they're teaching work for. And is that the same business model that you are building or that you already have in place in your business? Because the YouTube strategy, the client attraction strategy, the traffic strategy should match or be aligned with the business you are trying to build. I say that because, and if you couldn't read between the lines, I don't think shorts are a good investment of time and energy for a business owner on YouTube because you have to post a crap ton of short form content to get any real result from it. And most business owners don't want to do that. Most of the clients I work with, they don't want to be an influencer. They don't want to be on social media every day. They want to create helpful, useful, informative content that builds their authority, builds that no-like and trust on YouTube, and approaches YouTube with the let them come to you philosophy, which is what I teach. Shorts is like in direct opposition of that. So Shorts is just an example, right? Some people say you have to have um, you have to have a professional setup, you have to have like three camera angles, you have to have an editing team, you have to rent out a studio to create high production value YouTube videos in order for YouTube to work for you. And that's just not true. It's true for Alex Hormozy, it's true for um, I don't know, Mel Robbins. Doesn't have to be true for you, right? What is the business model that you are building? What is the day-to-day, how do I want to show up every day goal that you have for your life, for your business, for what you're doing here? To simplify this third diagnosis, because I did go off on a little tangent there, the third diagnosis is does your YouTube strategy fit your business model? Or are you trying to kind of Frankenstein a bunch of different guru advice that you've heard here and there from different people, thinking, oh, I'll just I'll just take a little bit from everyone and just do all of the right things, then you're not doing all of the right things because you're not following the specific strategy that works for you, for your business, and for the business that you're building. And don't worry, we're going to talk more about this in the Launch Your Darn Channel Already workshop. I've got your back. We're gonna cover everything you need to know. I'm gonna give you the complete blueprint for the seven video strategy to launch or relaunch your YouTube channel, your client-attracting YouTube channel, so that you can actually get things off the ground if you've been putting it off. If you were gonna go all in on YouTube this year and it hasn't really happened yet, this is for you. This is the time for you to come for an hour and um walk away with a real plan that works for your business, that works for your time, so that you actually get clients, customers, and email subscribers from the content that you publish on YouTube. So I'll put a link to that workshop down below and hope to see you there.