Lessons

Lesson Info

Hot Seat

Okay so we're gonna dive into the hot seat and this is where I'm gonna take a look at Riva's channel, and I did a little deep dive of my own which was really fun because I like doing this, because I want to help you guys. So you're off to a great start, which is the great thing. You are, and I know you don't think you are, cause you said to me yesterday you don't think you are. So we're gonna kind of go through this together but before we do, what do you think, based on everything you've learned, because you've learn a lot in the last hour or so or couple of hours, what do you think is your biggest hurtle right now, what you haven't been doing necessarily right? My biggest hurtle is just figuring out a clear strategy of who I'm reaching and what my message is. There's a lot of things I'm passionate about and I want to be very focused with how I create videos towards that audience, audiences. Got it, and do you feel like you have a little more clarity around that now? Absolutely, ...

yeah. Okay cool. So we're gonna dive into how we can bring some of your ideas that I'm sure are stewing in you head right now about this. We're gonna bring that to life in a second, but first I wanted to dive into your channel. So this is Riva's channel. It's quite beautiful, I like your channel header. And you know what I love? You have a value proposition in your header, so that's step one, you did that right. So what I wanted to point out is, on your channel currently, you have a video that's picking up quite a bit of traffic. And I have no idea why. (laughing) Now do you have an idea though, that we've gone through the analytics? Yeah well, no I haven't. I had literally abandoned my channel until I saw your email. So that's okay, we're gonna bring it back, bring it back to life. So what I would recommend doing is, I don't have access to your channel so I couldn't do this part, but this video, "Outdoor Partner Workout", it has 1,600 views. The next most popular video has 214. So this video, pay attention to it. Because there's traffic coming in from search and suggest, so what you want to do is go into your analytics. Go onto your traffic sources, figure out where the traffic is coming from for this video. What are people searching, for key words, and what are people watching that's bringing them to this video? Most important, okay? Cause that's gonna help you come up with more topics. The other thing I want to mention is your channel art and your channel header. I love your avatar picture. I think it's awesome; I think it's perfect. What I would say is in the channel header, we want to get a better idea of what it is that you're teaching, so I like that you have that pose right there, because it shows people that you're athletic, you're into fitness, that's what you're teaching people. Because tell everyone what your business is. I know a lot about you, at this point. (laughter) So you tell everyone what your business is for more context. Yeah, so I am a holistic wellness physician and so I help people literally transform their lives by building the lifestyle habits around nutrition, fitness, sleep, stress management, basically everything outside of traditional medicine. Great, so if I'm just discovering you, say through this video at the top, I wanna land on your channel and get all of that information in less than six seconds. Okay. That's where the channel header comes in. So we wanna make sure that on your channel header, I like your value statement, you can keep that. What you wanna add in is consistency. How many times a week are you posting? Let's start with one day a week. Are you solo prinuary? Yes. Okay, start with one day a week. Whatever day you wanna choose, all good. And we wanna make sure that your image is bigger. So what I would actually love to see on your channel header is an image of you looking strong, looking fierce, close up. She's like, "I can do that." (laughter) "Ain't a problem with that." Which I know is true, so we wanna have that front and center, because then people are gonna land on your channel and go, "Holy moly, "she knows what she's talking about. "I wanna subscribe to her channel, "I wanna watch more videos." Make sense? Got it, absolutely. Cool, so channel headers, first and foremost, let's get that done ASAP. You can use something like Canva to create it. It's really easy; I have a tutorial, obviously, on my Youtube channel of how to do it. So you can take a look at that and then paying attention to this video. Yes. Really, really, really important. What I would love to see you do to increase watch time and authority right off the bat, is create a series around this. So what you would do is create a playlist around outdoor workouts, yeah? Great. Like it? Yeah. And that playlist will be the first thing people see on your channel. So you'd wanna have a whole section right at the top that says outdoor workout exercises or outdoor workout ideas, something like that. So I did a little research for you. (laughter) Thank you. (laughs) And I dove into this to figure out what we could start with, because you have 46, I think, 46 subscribers. So we wanna keep it in between that 100 to 1000 searches per month, with low competition, so low search pool. The one that I liked was outdoor workouts no equipment, or outdoor workout park was also good. So any of those ones would work really well for you and you can do a bunch of different videos around outdoor workouts. I love working out outside. And that creates a whole series for you. And if someone's searching for one outdoor workout, they probably wanna know a few more. Sure. So that increases your watch time, increases your retention, increases your authority on Youtube, which is gonna help you build your channel faster. Awesome. So, paying attention to what's working on the channel, what's not working, and I actually want to take a look at a few of these, because I think it's interesting to see the titles that were picked and how we can improve on them. So, Welcome to RIVA Wellness, I love it. That's totally good; what I would do is actually change it to your business name or your name or whatever people would actually be searching for, let's put that at the very front of it. You could say like, RIVA Wellness Channel Description, or RIVA Wellness dash Welcome to my Channel, or RIVA Wellness Say Hello, something like that. Something that's gonna engage your subscribers. Easy Meal Prep For Weight Loss. It's interesting, I was actually looking at this and the search volume and the competition for weight loss, obviously, massive. (laughs) So it's not surprising that you have 90 views on that video, because I'm sure it's really good information, it's just people can't find it, because it's sinking to the bottom of the sea on Youtube. So we wanna make sure that we're starting on an even smaller scale to get you to go up, so niche down to go up, okay? Got it. It's really, really important; so does that all make sense? It does, thank you so much. Okay, perfect! Do you have further questions on your channel right now that I can help you with? Yeah, so I guess one of the things that I'm really kind of pondering about is, you know, I'm also a body builder, which is where a lot of that fitness background comes from. So I wanna be able to kind of bridge more of the medical side that the fitness side has-- You know, medical people don't tend to know a whole lot about fitness. Doctors are very unhealthy in general. Yeah, ironically, yeah. But then there's the fitness world, which tends to just be all bro science and you know, not actual medical fact around what they're doing. And so I guess my struggle is how do I effectively communicate that middle ground so that I'm bringing those two audiences together? What I would say is start with where you feel you're the strongest and grow an audience from there using that niche category. Start to go after more aggressive topics with higher search volume and higher search pools which is gonna gain momentum faster once you have built some authority. And then you have more freedom to talk about what you really wanna talk about. So I would niche down, again, niche down to go up. So start with the things that you're known for right now and then you have that authority, you have an audience who wants to listen to you, and then you can start diving into topics like that. I think if you go that route right now, it's gonna be a lot more challenging for you. Right, that's what I was afraid of. Yeah, so don't be afraid of it, you'll get there. (laughter) Just gotta get started. But we wanna-- I think it's counterintuitive and it doesn't make a lot of sense when you're first trying to build your channel, because you're thinking, "I should create topics on things that everyone in the world "is searching for, because that's gonna get me the views!" But keep in mind, if you have this idea for a topic and everyone in the world's searching for it, there's a million and one other people who have made videos on it already. So people often say, "I'm worried about competition. "I'm worried that there's too many people "in my niche talking about these things." There might be, but there's not a lot of people who are niching down, so that's where your power is. Your power is in targeting the small sector first, building relationships, building your community, and then, once you have a community in place who's gonna support you in the long term, you can start going after more aggressive topics. Love it. Cool! Thank you so much. You're so welcome! So we're gonna kind of dive into the whole machine of how this works in a second, but I did wanna ask, based on the feedback that I gave Riva, is there anyone else who wants to ask questions about their channel right now or topics? Yeah! I have a suggestion for Riva, based on what you taught us. Yes, I love it! (laughter) When you said tapping into the community hubs and competitors, so exactly what you were describing, there's a man that does that. And that's why I watch him, but I hate the fact that he doesn't have anything about women. So if you're a woman, but I'll just tell you the name of it, it's called Athlenex. I love him. Yes. And so just niche down and make it for women based on what she taught us today; it'll help you. I just, I'm so proud. (applause) I'm so proud; that makes me so happy. Great tip, thank you Monique. Okay, anyone else have questions about their channel? Because we're an agency, we like to promote, sometimes paid, so we've had great success recently with paid promotion content. Even $10, we're seeing thousands of views. Just wanted to get your opinion on paid versus organic and have you-- On Youtube are you doing the paid advertising? Youtube specifically. Okay, are you watching your analytics on those views? Yes, we're averaging two minutes. Out of? Two to four minute videos; we're making short content to try to match the analytics. Okay, cool; one thing I will say about paying for traffic or doing paid ads on your videos-- Are you doing in display or are you doing in stream advertising? Both. Both, okay; is it a tutorial-based video? Kind of? Somewhat. What's the video topic? Fitness services locally; localized fitness services geotargeted. Okay, so give me an example of one of the video topics. A new service is hyperbaric oxygen chambers, Cool, and so-- Why you need them. In that video, are you talking about the benefits of that or are you just being like, "This is a rad option; buy this." Primarily benefits, with a little bit of call to action at the end. Cool awesome; so one thing I would say, and this again goes back to your analytics and data and Tom Breese is gonna talk about all Youtube ads and he's awesome, but I do dabble in Youtube ads. I'm doing it for a few clients and it's something we've been testing for a long time now on my channel. I think that in display is a better option for you. Because in stream ads are actually going to hurt you more than help you when it's a tutorial based video. Because in stream ads are the ads that show up when you are watching a video and then it says, "Click off after five seconds." So you're getting a view, technically, kind of, but it's not actually a qualified view. And also in stream ads should be formulated and scripted in a way that's gonna grab people's attention in the first five seconds so you actually get value out of paying for that, whereas in display you only pay when people are actually clicking on it. And it really is acting the same way as ranking at the top of search, which I'm talking about organically, but you're just paying for it. So if you're using the right target key words, then you're using it in a really strategic way, and you're finding the right placements for that video, great option, cause you're getting more exposure. And as long as your retention is high and your analytics are good, great option, but there's a lot of steps and intricacies to it that I just wanna make sure that you're hitting so you're not just spending money without that actual return. Because it is actually easy, I had a client who first started working with me and we're going through the strategy and he's a pretty well known entrepreneur, and so we did the strategy and it was all organic and I was like, "We gotta start here "and then we're gonna dive into ads later." And he didn't wanna listen to me, so he did ads on his first video, and it was in stream ads. It was not built to be an in stream ad but he had racked up a couple of thousand views in the first 24 hours. (laughs) And he was bragging about it and posting about it and I sent him a message and I was like, "Don't talk about it because those aren't real views "and you're not getting quality views; "you're just getting a high quantity of them, "so it's kind of false advertising "and it's not really a representation for you "of what's resonating with your target audience. "The best representation of that "is the organic content first and then using that "to figure out what kind of content you wanna make in ads." Makes sense? That's great, thank you. Pleasure. I know you didn't really talk about playlists, but is that really beneficial for a Youtube channel and also just for ranking for key words and stuff like that? Playlists are super beneficial. They can rank, which is awesome. So I talk about that in the Boss Youtube channel checklist, which is on the page to download. But they're really important, but it's also a matter of you have to have enough videos (laughs) in order to fill out those playlists. So you need to have a library of content and you need to be strategic in how you're creating the content in order to build out those playlists. But yeah, I definitely recommend doing them. And that's where they come in handy, when you've created sort of like these series. So if Riva's gonna do outdoor workouts or outdoor workouts for women, whole playlist right there; that can rank. And then people are binge watching that content cause they click on the playlist and they see all the videos related to that topic. Hi Sunny, I had a question actually about playlists and end cards. Right now, we're using end cards, but we're not putting them on our videos that are in a playlist, hoping for the Netflix kind of binge effect, that they would continue watching the next couple of videos and trying to get people to subscribe because they like the content or through cards throughout the video. Is that a good strategy? I think it's a fine strategy, but it's also one of those things that you wanna pay attention to the analytics on. So I would really dive into testing it. So do it for a couple of weeks without adding the end cards or without adding cards or end screens, and then do it for a couple of weeks with those added, and I would compare notes on what happened when you had the end screens and what happened when you just did sort of like the more Netflix effect within the playlist. Make sense? Awesome, thank you, yeah. I can't answer it unless I see the data, so I hope that was helpful. Yeah, yeah, very helpful. Yeah, cool, thanks.