Sean Cannell (0:00)

If you've been trying to grow your YouTube channel on your own, you might be frustrated because it's kind of like trying to get in shape without a coach. Slow, frustrating, and full of trial and error. That's why we created the Think Media one on one coaching program where you will get a dedicated expert to walk you through your next steps, to hold you accountable and to teach you advanced growth strategies. Plus, you get connected with the right expert in specific areas from our Think Media team for whatever challenge you're facing. But here's the deal. The annual fee is going up soon, so if you've been on the fence, now's the time to lock in your spot. Just go to YTCoaching.com to apply before the price increases. There is a lot of bad advice on how to grow on YouTube out there, and it's not just ineffective, it actually could be hurting your channel's growth. Today I'm going to be exposing 10 of these so called expert tips that could be killing your momentum. Over the past decade, I've tested hundreds of different YouTube strategies. I've watched thousands of creators succeed and fail, and in the process I've identified the bad advice that is holding creators back. So here are 10 pieces of horrible YouTube advice so you can do the opposite and reach your YouTube goals faster than ever before. Number one be authentic and the success will come. So there has been this massive authenticity movement on YouTube where people are claiming that if you'll just be yourself, then the success will come. And I'm a big proponent of being real and relatable in your content. The power of vulnerability. But if your content lacks strategy and it lacks structure and it lacks excellence and planning, then you're going to continue to struggle. Imagine you were boarding a plane on your way to a destination vacation and you had the choice between two pilots. Pilot number one was highly skilled and trained and pilot number two was really relatable and authentic. Which pilot do you want flying the plane? For me, I'm choosing skill and training every single time and I don't even care if they're authentic or not. My point is passion and personality matter for sure, but expertise, research and effort are the key to creating real impact on YouTube. But this one gets a little tricky because you've probably noticed that there are creators that are getting crazy amounts of views from shooting very stripped down videos, just kind of talking head. Or maybe they're sitting in their car and it's like a car confessional where they're riffing on a topic or jumping on A trending topic. And the truth is those videos can do well. And there is an opportunity in what some people are calling YouTube easy mode. Some of those creators might have a breakout video or to. But where are they? Over six months, 12 months, two years. I think one of the things we have to be aware of in today's YouTube environment is that people have a lot of choices. So imagine somebody looking for information and they have two different choices. On YouTube, the first grader spent two hours on the content, and the second grader spent 20 hours on the content. The first grader, they just kind of got a brief idea of what they wanted to say. They hit record, no editing. They talked through the topic of the video, and then they uploaded it and posted it. Cool. Now, here's the thing. Sometimes those videos pop off. Sometimes a quick and dirty video, raw, quick shot posted can actually get hundreds of thousands of views. That absolutely happens. But then compare it to the second creator who took 20 hours to plan out the video, Put some structure in there, shoot some extra b roll and clips, put it all together in editing, especially if it's educational. Put more research and testing into the product or the thing they were going to te and then put that out on YouTube. Which one's gonna be more impactful, which one's gonna be more memorable, and which one has the greatest chance of succeeding in the long term? The bad advice is that just being real and just being authentic is enough. On YouTube, the winning formula is, of course, both number two, post every day on YouTube and eventually you'll win the YouTube lottery. With all the different live stream and coaching that we do here at Think Media, we get a lot of feedback from creators. And every once in a while, I'll see people in or I'll see them in one of our groups or our challenges, and they'll be flexing on how many videos they post. They're like, I post seven times a week. I post every single day, bro. And why? I actually think it's commendable that you're putting in that much hustle and that much effort. Quantity does not equal quality. And the danger is you may burn out before seeing results. And what's fascinating about some of this bad YouTube advice is there's some truth in it. Like, the more you post on YouTube, the more chances, the more at bats you have of hitting the right video on the right topic at the right time and triggering the algorithm. But just trying to win the YouTube lottery is a bad strategy. We've all heard the phrase you need to work Smarter, not just harder. And I think that really applies here. Being more intentional, strategic, and perhaps reducing the amount of uploads and increasing how much strategy and energy and effort goes into each video. For example, here at the Think Media podcast, we talk about ranked videos all of the time. What is a ranked YouTube video? Well, it's a video that you post today that keeps getting views for weeks, months and years to come. It might be being found in YouTube search, or it might continue to be suggested by the YouTube algorithm. The key is just one well crafted ranked video can outperform dozens of mindless, rushed YouTube videos. Now, you might be wondering, how exactly do I create a ranked video that keeps getting views for weeks, months and years to come? And I'm actually going to be teaching our seven step process in an upcoming challenge that's five days long. It's entirely free. If you go to tube1k challenge.com or just click the link in the show notes to register, you can learn more about that. The third piece of bad YouTube advice is wait until you have the perfect camera and the perfect YouTube studio before starting. Of course, the truth is, the best camera to have is the one you already do have. And that you're actually filming and posting videos with great content wins over fancy gear. Hear me out. I heard a leadership coach say one time, complexity is the enemy of execution. And I thought about that and I thought, man, that is so true when it comes to creating content. You know, I'm recording this podcast sitting here in my home office and I've got like three cameras, a Rodecast Pro, microphones, cables, my cable management under my desk is so embarrassing and is an absolute nightmare. And what I found is that I've got a PC that I built out and had to like rebuild and has a capture card in it. And every day, like, it might work. It sometimes doesn't work and I sometimes am capturing different video podcasts and the frame rate's wrong. And then I play it back and the audio sync is drifting and I'm like, even though I'm a tech expert, I'm, I'm the camera guy. Like, I will also encourage you to level up your gear. What I've learned is that keeping it simple helps you be more productive. Complexity is the enemy of execution. A good piece of content that adds value to the audience that you want to reach, that's posted on YouTube, that's good enough, and that's actually shared with the world is going to make a lot more impact than hours of footage that is stuck on a hard Drive and you're trying to figure out how to edit it, and you're trying to actually get it all the way from where you thought about it to actually being posted. For example, here is a simple content creator kit smartphone plus the app capcut. I'm pretty much certain that if you're listening to this, your smartphone films in at least high definition, probably 4K. It's got a great video camera, it's, it's got good enough audio. And if you use an app like capcut, you can actually make your smartphone videos pretty amazing, pretty easy. And I get it. Tech can kind of be overwhelming, and video editing has a learning curve. But just put some time into it. Put a few minutes into it. You'll pick up, you'll get the hang of it. Stop waiting for the perfect setup. Use what you have and start creating number four. Follow what the big YouTubers do and you'll grow like them. The truth is, what works for Mr. Beast or Alex Hormozi won't necessarily work for you. Consider that they have years of experience, they've got huge budgets and capital to spend on their content, and they've got teams that are helping them make every video. Comparing yourself to other big YouTubers or to one of your competitors that's ahead of you is unrealistic and probably unhelpful. I heard John Acuff say, never compare your beginning to somebody else's middle. However, I do think we could take this one a little bit deeper and find some growth opportunities. For example, studying where they are today has some value, but the real power is in studying where they started. For example, if you look at Alex Hormozi, who talks about business and entrepreneurship on YouTube, if you look at where he's at today, his videos are super fancy. He's built a big content team. He's got some really creative, almost theatric type of business videos. But that's not where he started. He started filming on what is the equivalent of like a baked potato. Like, it was like a webcam in a dark room in a dark closet. And he would sometimes just do talking head videos or film essentially zoom quality tutorials or PowerPoints. Yet those are what helped him get to where he is today. And our goal here is to distill down why was the individual successful. And the reason he was successful was because of the frameworks he was teaching. It was also because of the results he had gotten in business before he started teaching about business. And so if you find a model like that, you say, okay, for me to Emulate Alex Hormozi. Maybe I need to go get results in business first before I start teaching about business. Or maybe I need to refine my original ideas, frameworks, my proprietary process, how I communicate. Because it's not about the camera quality or the production value, especially initially for his success, it was about the information that he was delivering and the results it got for people. Now consider Mr. Beast imitating what he's doing now is ridiculous. Like he literally spends millions of dollars on individual YouTube videos. And I know his staff expends to other brands like Feastables and other business brands, but I think he has like 500 staff. But you can still learn from him. How did he start? Well, he started early on with charity content, taking whatever money he had and filming out and about and giving that money away. He started with some kind of stunt challenge videos which were just ridiculous, like saying Logan Paul thousands of times in a ultra long video. But the production value wasn't super crazy. It wasn't because he had a good studio and I don't even really know what the point of that video is, but it worked and it was original and it was unique. And so it wasn't because he had a big staff or a big budget. It was because of his creativity. YouTube will reward you for good ideas. YouTube will reward you for creativity. And so when I think about the bad advice of just do what the big YouTubers do and you'll be successful, there actually is quite a bit of truth to that because success leaves clues. I think the key is we're looking for the patterns, the mindsets and the principles these individuals applied at the different stages of their journey. No matter where you are today, I believe you can make progress and grow on YouTube. It's never about your resources, it's about your resourcefulness. And so one idea that might be helpful and that could give you an unfair advantage before we get to the next point is don't just study big creators, study their beginnings. 99% of people won't do this research. Go back to where they started, try to extrapolate and find those principles and then apply those to the content that you're creating today. Number five, click through rate is the most important metric on YouTube. While it is true that click through rate is very important, it's really only half of the battle. Now let's all get on the same page as far as what we're talking about here. CTR or click through rate is the percentage of people that click click on your video if they see it somewhere they see it on the homepage, they search for it, they scroll past it. And so if your video got a hundred impressions, that means they see it on some surface on YouTube and they have a chance to click on it and it had a 10% click through rate, then it would get 10 views, 10 people would click on it and then watch the video. And so this is influenced by how good of a topic you have, how good of your title you have, and the quality of your thumbnail and how all of those things work together. And so the reason this is important is because if you can actually bait the click, AKA click bait, but you don't keep the viewer watching, then your video is still going to fail. And so the reason this is bad advice is just because it's incomplete. Some people, and there's a lot of YouTube coaches out there that do like channel reviews and they'll talk about titles and they'll talk about thumbnails and they're just kind of looking on the surface of things, missing kind of the most important part, and that's the content itself. Does your video grab attention right at the beginning with a powerful hook? Does it use storytelling or compelling organization throughout to keep people watching? Are you trimming the fluff eventually, once you start to edit your videos so that you can actually increase what matters most to YouTube, which is time on platform top audience retention, minutes matter most are people actually watching the content. And I'm not invalidating click through rate because if they never click on it, then they can't watch through the video. So it's not either or, it's both. The sixth piece of bad advice is short videos are the future. Long content is dead. Short videos perform better because people have short attention spans. Now while I agree that some people have short attention spans, I think that this point is misleading, over generalized and grossly exaggerated. The truth is there are a lot of people whose attention spans are going down, whose short form consumption is going up. There's also other people who really enjoy long form, rich, deeply educational video, podcasts and learning videos on YouTube. The question is, who are you currently attracting with the content that you're creating right now and who ideally would you want to reach? On the other hand, long form content might have lower views, but how much depth are you creating with that viewer? And the truth is long form content wins for business and monetization. And this is provable. You have more revenue potential when it comes to long form content. You can have multiple ad placements, you have higher CPMs and RPMs and overall more advertiser interest and going further, you have a deeper connection with long form viewers. People who watch long form content form stronger relationships with the creator. These viewers are more likely to buy products, courses, coaching services, go deeper with whatever it is you offer and even remember you Because Let me ask you a question. You were scrolling on YouTube shorts or Instagram reels yesterday. Do you remember what you watched? Can you name three of the creators that you followed? You probably laughed a lot. You probably forwarded some of those accounts on Instagram and DM'd your friends. But did you follow the person? Did you go deeper with them? It happens, but not as much as it does with long form content on YouTube. And so hear me, I'm not invalidating short form content. I am just asking you to be more strategic. So instead of asking what's performing best right now or only asking what will get me the most views, you may want to ask what kind of audience do I want to build? Number 7 SEO is the best way to grow this is bad advice and this one might surprise you if you follow the Think Media podcast for any length of time because I'm a huge fan of SEO search engine optimization on YouTube. However, the reason this is bad advice is search traffic only accounts for about 30% or less of views on YouTube. If you are not tapping into browse features getting your videos Suggested by the YouTube algorithm, you're leaving thousands and even millions of views on the table. I believe that the ultimate YouTube skill set to have this year is the ability to craft content that can be found in YouTube search but also take advantage of being suggested in the YouTube algorithm. We actually have a four step framework for how to do that. It's called the Perfect Video Recipe. So I'll link in the show notes a couple of videos on the Perfect Video Recipe and if you actually want to read about it, I talk about it in the updated edition of YouTube Secrets, which for a limited time we're actually giving away this book free. I will mail it to you if you just cover shipping. So if you go to yt secrets.com or click the link in the show notes, you can get a copy of the new edition of my book YouTube Secrets. We deleted a couple of chapters, we added some new chapters, there's like 90 new pages. So again anyways, if you cover shipping, I'll get this in the mail to you right away. Just go to yt secrets.com number eight. You need to go viral on YouTube to be successful. The reason this is wrong is one viral video won't build a business. Consistency and momentum matter more. And I have an interesting perspective on this because I've been uploading content on YouTube since 2007 when I was interning at a small church in Marysville, Washington in the Pacific Northwest. Our church YouTube channel grew to an incredible 42 subscribers. Can you believe it? But here's the thing. I've been on YouTube so long that I've seen people come and go and you've probably seen the same thing. It's kind of like one hit wonders in music. We now have one hit wonders on social media and in the creator economy. I think there's two truths to consider here. One, you could be wildly successful on YouTube and never go viral. Or two, committing to slow and steady success even without the expectation of going viral. But building the reps, building the consistency, building the trust, building your brand. If you do go viral, those are the ones that actually make it and take advantage of it. Those that don't just get lucky once and then fall off and disappear. It's those that have been doing the work, developing the character, developing the depth, developing the consistency. They then have that viral moment and all of a sudden, boom. Their whole channel lifts. But they're able to steward it well. Kind of reminds me about this verse in the book of Proverbs that says an inheritance gained too early in the beginning will not be blessed in the end. I think for some individuals, they go viral in the beginning of their career and then they're nowhere to be found a few months or a few years later. They didn't have the character, they didn't have the infrastructure, they hadn't built the consistency muscle. So viral is overrated. It's cool if it happens in the right context, but ultimately, what can we control? We can commit to slow and steady, disciplined content creation over time. Number nine, and I've heard this one a lot, you need a huge channel to make real money on YouTube. Why this is wrong is you do not need millions of subscribers or even millions of views. You need the right audience and a smart monetization strategy. This is one of the topics we're going to be covering in depth in our upcoming YouTube challenge and sharing a lot of case studies and stories of creators that can make big money with a small channel. I'll never forget when we got an email from Jen Devore Richter and she emailed our team at Think Media and said, hey, I just had an $11,000 week and at the time she only had 546 subscribers. Now the key was that she was running her own agency, she had her own freelance marketing services business. But I think that's the mindset to have. Like if you just want to chase ad revenue, that's cool. You can make good money with things like affiliate marketing and make a little bit more. But the key is understanding all the different financial opportunities that there are in the creator economy and selecting a monetization path that is not just best for you, but is also you've reverse engineered it to make sure that it's actually sustainable, that you don't need a huge audience if you pick the right money strategies. And there's all these new ways to make money. Right now, I think in our list that we're going to be talking about, there's like 8 on platform opportunities. That means directly from YouTube and there's 14 off platform opportunities, meaning you make money with YouTube not from ad revenue, but other ways. So again, if you're interested in being a part of that challenge, I'll link it up in the show notes. But the big idea is you do not need a huge channel to make real money. Now we got to hit the 10th piece of bad YouTube advice in just a second. But I do want to ask if you've been getting value added. Today's episode of the Think Media podcast, can you hit the like button and rate, review, share wherever you watch or listen to this content? Number 10. It's too late to start YouTube. The truth is, that's not true. In fact, don't let somebody that's given up on their dreams talk you out of yours. The truth is, YouTube is not saturated. In fact, Goldman Sachs did an article in their research department that said the creator economy is actually going to double in the next two years. It's the fastest growing small business type. Is competition fierce? Absolutely. Are there new challenges with breaking through on YouTube? Of course. You gotta be more strategic. You gotta be more intentional. You absolutely have to learn new skills and develop your own unique strategy. But it is possible. It's massive. There's billions of people consuming content every single day and the audience of consumers continues to grow. More people watch YouTube in US living rooms than than Netflix. That's a fact. Smart TV consumption is going up, mobile consumption is going up, and there's something like 800,000 new people joining the Internet every day. You can fact check me, but it's something pretty close to that number. And so this is still a great time to start YouTube. And it's mostly individuals that can have a defeated or discouraged mindset. And I don't fault them for that. It's tough to grow a YouTube channel, but it is possible. In fact, if you haven't seen Google, who owns YouTube, recently released a report revealing some of the best ways to grow a YouTube channel right now based on brain imaging studies that they did of viewers. So I'll put a link to that video in the show notes. Or if you're watching on YouTube, you can click or tap the screen to watch that episode of the Think Media Podcast. Next, hit the like button or share this wherever you watch or listen. My name is Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel. This is the Think Media Podcast, and I will catch you in the next episode.