There are a few things I am doing in 2019 to grow my YouTube channel – because I use YouTube for business. I wanted to share this for two reasons. One, I know a lot of fitness coaches especially have a YouTube channel of some sort. Sometimes they’re just work outs. Sometimes they are other tips, strategies, that kind of thing.
But I also know just as a whole business owners of any industry are starting to hop on YouTube for business but more and more so I thought this might help you whether you already a YouTube channel or you’re thinking about starting one, hopefully hearing what I’m trying you could also try on your own YouTube channel and help you grow even faster.
And obviously if you didn’t know I had a YouTube channel be sure and go check it out. There’s over 300 videos with tutorials and tips!
But now let’s dive in. I want to share these four things that I’m trying in 2019.
Even though I use YouTube for business, I’m sharing more of my personal life in these YouTube videos.
I’ve even tried doing that a little more too in my podcast episodes. Hopefully you guys are enjoying that. I found that I really enjoy hearing more of the personal side of these online entrepreneurs that I follow whether it’s people with millions of followers or just friends or people that I don’t even know that I’m following for one reason or another.
This isn’t to say that the podcast or even the videos are going to be 100% personal, just random YouTube videos since I use YouTube for business. They’re still going to be business centered but the last few videos especially I have really started to incorporate just like hey this is something else I was working on personally with either my husband, our foster child, my dog, or whatever else. I just trying to include hey I am a business owner but I also still have a life and other things that I care about and do during the day and you guys might want to know that.
This is something I really have only begun to do in February and I’ve already seen that it’s really connecting with people. It’s really resonating. So a few weeks ago I mentioned hey we got a foster child. And I got more comments on that you Tube video than I have a lot of other videos in the life of my channel.
And all the comments were saying oh my gosh that’s so great. Congrats. I didn’t know this was happening. So it really showed me that people that follow me that I don’t even actually know who they are, they’re not business friends or clients. They do care about my personal life at least to a certain extent. I decided I wanted to share more of these personal tid bits because not only do I like seeing it in other people that I follow online, but I think this is a big shift that is happening in online marketing where people want to know who is behind the brand. They don’t want to just learn, learn, learn. They want to see what do you do on the weekends. And that kind of thing.
So I think it’s going to be an interesting balance between still providing value, educating people, but also give them some ways to connect with you on a personal level.
The second thing I’m trying on my YouTube channel this year is being more consistent with end screens.
If you are a YouTuber, you’ve probably seen the option to add end screens to each video. If you’re not a YouTuber, end screens are basically these clickable buttons that you can add on to the end of your videos and it’s usually a thumbnail to another related video or playlist or even a channel. I used to try and be more consistent with using end screens and I’m so so in that regard. But I have kind of changed how I end my YouTube videos and instead of just saying hey thanks for watching be sure and give it a thumbs up, blah blah blah. I am saying if you want more information on how to xyz, if it’s an Instagram video I’m saying if you want more social media help or tips watch these YouTube videos. And I have different playlists that I can then add in those end screens and people can say, “oh yeah, I do want more social media tips.” So it keeps them on my channel longer consuming more of my content which obviously is great for me because they consume more of my content, hopefully they subscribe, they join my list, go to my website, anything like that.
But it’s also great because YouTube loves when you keep people on their platform longer. And especially if you keep them on your own channel, they see like oh Joe is really liking this particular channel. It must be a good sign. But if you can just keep them on YouTube, you still get brownie points from them.
The third thing I’m trying is having simpler and cleaner thumbnails.
Since I use YouTube for business and I have my website, my other social media platforms… I want everything to be cohesive. And I would say that for anybody. I’m not just saying this because I’m a designer and want everything to be cohesive. I think it’s important for brand recognition. So it’s not a drastic change to my thumbnails but they are just a lot more colorful and a lot easier to read hopefully. So I do think it has helped with getting more clicks and views, but to be honest it would take some more time in looking at more data to really evaluate if they truly have helped or if there’s other factors at play.
Either way I do like the new thumbnails. They are better designed I feel like. And easier to make. So that’s just something else that you could try is making different thumbnails. And I have changed the thumbnail design on my youtube channel probably three or four times now. Each time it’s just a slight change.
It always does still look branded with Jess Creatives. So thumbnails are definitely something you could try editing within your Youtube channel, making them brighter, making them more colorful, adding different texts, trying different font. There’s a lot of different things you could play around with just make sure they do remain branded.
And then the last thing I’m doing in 2019 is I’m only using podcasts and YouTube for business. I’m no longer blogging.
(Clearly, you’re reading this on a blog right now… but this is just the podcast/video transcript.)
I started blogging in 2013. I’ve blogged consistently every week for the last five years. And decided in 2019 I’m not going to be blogging. Now I am technically creating blog posts of the podcast transcripts so people who come to my website can see like oh she does have a podcast and it gives me that SEO benefit and I’m doing the same with the videos. I’m not doing a transcript but I’m embedding the video into a blog post. But there’s no text. It’s literally just the video. But I decided to really just focus my energy on creating videos and podcasts because it’s what I enjoy more. And I didn’t have the time to really keep blogging and I just wanted to drive all my traffic to either the podcast or the videos instead of the blogs.
So those are the four things I’m focusing on in 2019 when it comes to using YouTube for business. Being more personal on Youtube, adding end screens more consistently, using those simpler cleaner thumbnails and really just focusing on driving the traffic there instead of trying to divide attention between blogs, videos, and podcasts. Just either doing the videos or the podcasts.
Now while we’re talking about traffic, one of the ways that I drive traffic to my videos consistently and even my old blog posts because they’re still in my website is SmarterQueue. This is a social media scheduling platform that basically reposts your content over and over and over again on a schedule and it kind of rotates through the different blogs, the different videos that you give it. So that your content still gets pushed out to new people. Because you know you always have hopefully new people following you on Linkedin or Twitter or Facebook. So those new people may not have seen the posts from three months ago of that particular blog or video.
I have found this is a huge time saver and a lot cheaper than hiring a social media manager which that serves a totally different purpose. Social media managers are great but if you don’t have the budget for a manager to pay a few hundred dollars a month, SmarterQueue is $20 a month – so a lot more affordable. I hope this was helpful. If you have any Youtube for business questions, feel free to DM me on Instagram @jesscreatives and I will see you in the next episode.
*There are affiliate links within this post, so I will receive a commission if you choose to buy.
