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Lesson Info

Setting Up Your Channel to Attract Fans

So the first step in actually getting this started, is setting up your YouTube channel for success and to attract fans, your ideal fans. And one thing I really wanna hit home as well, we'll probably dive into this a little bit more later is, I know that it's easy to look at someone like Linda, or someone like myself and be like, hundreds of thousands of subscribers. That's what I need. But I talked about this at the beginning. Every single individual number is a person. You wanna focus on quality, not quantity. And when you focus on the quality, it attracts more quantity. So we really want to focus on the ideal people for your channel because it's actually not ideal for you to be attracting people who are just viral fans or people who happen to find one random video, but aren't invested in you. You wanna create content that attracts people who are in your niche, who are gonna hang off of your every word, and who are gonna be fans for life. So even if you have 500 subscribers, that's a ...

movement right there. Those are people who wanna work with you, who know they can trust you, and I mean everybody here, if you had even 50 subscribers and everyone of those people wanted to work with you in the next couple months, good for business right? (audience murmurs) Okay. So that puts it into some context. So how do you set up your YouTube channel to attract fans? Well, first and foremost, you need to have a channel header. Who here has a channel header on their channel? Okay good. Perfect, we're on the right track. (laughter) So your channel header is really really important. Channel trailer, does anybody have a channel trailer on their channel? Good job Sue. Good job Jared. Nice job. All right so channel header, channel trailer. I'm gonna make this pretty simplified for you because we don't wanna over-complicate the process of setting up your channel. It really should take you less than an hour to get this done. Next up is custom thumbnails. So important. And you saw one of my thumbnails is not the best. But I had a custom theme to all of my thumbnails in the early days and now we're kind of slowly progressing into a new style and theme. But as long as you have something that people can see your thumbnail and go, that's Sunny's or that really stands out to me amongst all those other search results. Really really important. So who wants to talk about their brand colors right now? Does anybody, oh Jared go ahead. What are your brand colors? So we use black and we actually do a lot of Google work, so we use the colors from Google. That's brilliant. Yeah. Is that allowed? It is. They're just colors. They don't own the colors. They're just colors. It is Google. I like it. And with your YouTube channel, is your YouTube channel set up right now? You said you have your channel header Yes and you've done videos? Many. Okay great. And on your thumbnails, are you integrating those brand colors? Always. Perfect. Okay, good job. So we wanna make sure that whether someone finds you on your website, on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, or on YouTube, they go I know those colors. I recognize the theme here. That's the person I wanna go to. So wherever they find you or touch base with you, you wanna make sure that it's familiar to them on any platform. And the best way to do that is to integrate your brand colors. So your custom thumbnails is where we're gonna have those brand colors and in your header as well. So, for everyone watching at home and all of you in the audience as well, you can find the other simple steps, there's 14 simple steps to setting up your channel for success, in my Boss YouTube channel checklist and it's on the Creative Live course page. That's going to show you step by step and with every little detail. Getting your channel set up in a way that when you do have millions of people coming to your channel on a daily basis, they know who you are, what you do, and how you can help them. And that's gonna help you grow further, faster, and more importantly attract the right people. Not just random people. Okay, so channel header. This is what mine looks like currently on my channel. And we're actually just, we're doing a revamp right now. But this is what it's been, basically from scratch to 150,000 subscribers. So what I have on here, and we're gonna break it down of what you kinda need to have on your channel header. I have the consistency. So, every week I post on Tuesdays at 6:45 AM. Why do I do that? Because I like to call it the Oprah effect. Anybody else watch Oprah growing up? (laughter) So I would run home everyday after school to go watch Oprah. And I knew she was on at four o'clock, PST. And so it was a habit. It became a ritual for me. You wanna create a habit with your channel. You want people to know when you're gonna show up for them so they show up for you. So Tuesdays 6:45 AM. So I have that on my header so people know when they go to my channel, okay this isn't just a one off video that I found. She's actually creating content every single week. So that makes me want to subscribe for more. So first and foremost is how many videos and when you post per week. Next is having a logo and an image of you. So people get familiar with that and they actually know what you look like so they're not surprised when they see some person in the video on your channel. They know that's actually you. Next is some sort of positioning statement. So a brief description of your value proposition. What are you gonna teach people? What is your content about? How can you help them? That makes people want to subscribe to your channel. Even if it's an entertainment based channel, you can say I do new music covers of the best songs out there every single week. Something like that so people know what they're gonna get. And again, the more you tell people what you're offering, the more it weeds out the people you don't want on your channel. The other thing is you get bonus points for any credibility mentions. So if you've been featured anywhere in any press at all, add those to your header because immediately people go, oh she must know what she's talking about or he must know what he's talking about if they've been featured in these places. So that's channel header. Channel trailer, pretty simple. And I started out with something very grassroots, very basic. But really there's just a few little elements that you need to include. It's pretty easy. Highlight reel of some of the things you've done or some of the things you've talked about in other videos that have been really helpful to people. So short little clips. Who you are obviously. And why you're a credible source i.e., you're the founder of... Or you're an author or you're the creator of... And the simplest way to add credibility is just say I'm Sunny of sunnylenarduzzi.com. Everybody have a website here? 'kay. So that's all you need to do. How your content will benefit viewers. Again, all benefit driven. If you're clear on the benefit, you attract the right people. So it's really really important to have that in your channel trailer. And most importantly, because when people, when someone lands on your channel and they see your channel trailer, this is your first introduction to them. So it needs to be engaging. It needs to tell them why they should subscribe. And then don't forget, not everybody's on YouTube everyday like I am or maybe like a few of you are. So they don't know really how it works or how they're going to see more of your videos. So you need to tell them, be sure to subscribe. Give them a call to action. Or you can say subscribe and check out my website for more info. That way you're killing two birds with one stone. So what I wanted to show you is actually my first channel trailer. So it's much more simple than what's on there right now. The one that's on there right now is a little more pre-produced. But this one is super simple and it got me from scratch to 50,000 subscribers. So take a look. Hi, I'm Sunny. Welcome to my YouTube channel. This is where you'll find social media tips and tricks, tech and app reviews, behind the scenes vlogs, and so much more. Each week I'll bring you brand new videos, so be sure to subscribe to my channel so you'll be the first to know when I upload a new video. And make sure you comment below to say hello. I'll see you soon. There you go. Pretty simple. Less than 30 seconds. So it doesn't need to be long 'cuz you don't want people to sit through a lengthy video about you and then get bored and then forget to subscribe. You just wanna tell them who you are, what you do, how you can help them, and how they can engage with you. So actually on this video, I think this video has about 50,000 views now. And it's got thousands of comments on it of people saying hi 'cuz I asked them to in the video. And that builds the relationship with them. So I'm saying hi right off the bat when they get to my channel. I'm asking them about what they do and where they're from. And I can guarantee you most of your competitors not doing that step, so they haven't built an audience with the, or a relationship with their audience whereas you have that opportunity. And the relationships are what's going to take you the furthest. So make sure that that's included in your channel trailer. So, custom thumbnails. Let's take a look at these. And I know, is there a graphic designer in the room? Yes, awesome. So you both have a leg up here because you obviously have a graphic design background. And it's really easy to over complicate thumbnails. And I'm sure you've probably gone on YouTube and seen some really bad ones. (laughter) Yeah, have you? Yeah. So, and I would love your insights here as well. So keeping it as simple as possible, keeping them professional, and most importantly including brand colors. So, they should be consistent in text and color and align with your brand aesthetic. That's really really important. So everything about your brand. We use steelfish for our text on our videos and on everything we do. And we keep that consistent in our graphics we use in our video and also in our thumbnail. You can also add custom thumbnails once you have verified your Google account. So if you haven't verified your Google account and you've tried to upload a custom thumbnail, it's a very frustrating experience. So it takes no time at all. I obviously have a tutorial on it so you can check that out. But that's one thing you need to know before you try and upload a custom thumbnail. So these are a few of ours. And I'm gonna be totally honest and I'm gonna critique myself. We're actually changing up our thumbnails right now. So I like them because they're branded with our colors and people know black, white, and gold. But I actually think there's too much text there. It's hard to read, it's hard to read. So we're updating them. They look nice and I think they're beautiful and our graphic designer does an amazing job. But there's always room for improvement. And you saw my earlier thumbnails. I was making them myself on Canva. And you can make a beautiful thumbnails on Canva, but you wanna keep them as simple as possible. So big, bold text. Try and keep it under four words. And make it catchy or hooky or make people want to actually click on it. And of course, if you can have an image of yourself, that's helpful because people know you and they wanna click on a face versus just a logo. So it's really important. The next thing I wanna mention is going live to launch your channel. Who's comfortable on live streams, say yes if you are. Yes. Okay cool. I know you're very comfortable. (laughter) So we wanna go live to launch our channel and actually go live on YouTube. This is one of the most under-utilized tools on YouTube right now because it's new-ish. I have a tutorial on how to go live on your channel to launch it. But basically, what you wanna do is if you want to bump up your subscribers and get more engagement and views on your videos, which I know everyone in this room does, all you need to do is drive your warm audience from other places to YouTube. So Sue, you have 50,000 subscribers or followers on Instagram? Over, yeah. Over 50,000, okay. That's 50,000 people that you could be driving over to the YouTube channel. So you can promote it on your most popular platform. Outside of YouTube, what are everyone's most popular platforms? I know yours is Facebook Live, correct? So what's your audience there? And Instagram? The Facebook Live I mainly host for other clients and we have 700,000 on that. But if I cross-promote on Twitter, you know that could work. But my largest audience is actually YouTube and then Instagram for personal. There you go, perfect. So you can leverage your Instagram audience and you can leverage your other platforms. And all you have to do is simply tell them, hey I'm starting to get really serious about my YouTube channel. I'm gonna be posting weekly tutorials. And the best thing you can do is ask them what you want them to make content about. So what do they want from you? 'Cuz why? That goes back to frequently asked questions. Then you have a whole bank of content from your audience saying this is what I wanna know about. And it gives them an incentive to subscribe. So if you're gonna go live, simple strategy. Tell your audience on your other platforms that you're going to start a YouTube channel. Set a date for it. Go live on YouTube on that date. And before you get there, you've sent out emails to your email list if you have one. You've sent tweets to Twitter, you've posted on Facebook, and you posted on Instagram and put it in your story with just a link a link to your YouTube channel. And you just say, all you have to do is subscribe, click the bell to get notified, and I'm gonna go live on this date talking about x topic. And what's that topic gonna be? It's gonna be one of the most frequently asked questions. One of the questions that they want you to answer. Sue. Do you then create thumbnails for those live broadcasts after? Yeah, so the amazing thing about YouTube live is that those videos stay on YouTube afterwards. So they can also rank for you. So there's a couple different reasons why it's so beneficial. It can rank for you. It increases the watch time on your channel because it keeps people on your channel longer. Which means that, and watch time is a really important analytic, we'll talk about it later, on YouTube because the longer people stay on your channel, the more it tells Google and YouTube, this is quality content. We should boost it up in the algorithm. We should show it to more people. So launching with a live stream allows you to build your subscriber base with a warm audience from your other social platforms. It allows you to boost your watch time. And you're making searchable content 'cuz you're doing it based off of FAQs or what your audience wants to know. And so that content can rank for you and work for you for years to come. Is this making sense? Say yes if it is. Yes. Cool. So this is my best tip for getting an instant boost in engagement and subscribers on your channel. Set a party date. That's what I like to call it. Set a live date. When you're gonna have a little hosting/viewing party, launch party for your YouTube channel. And you can treat it like a course launch or a product launch or whatever it might be. So definitely wanna check out this video on YouTube and all you have to do is just type in how to launch a YouTube channel. You can type in my name to make sure that you hit the right one. But you'll see my face in the thumbnail. I'm following my own directions. And it'll break down the entire strategy for you.