Get Your S-L-O-W Channel UNSTUCK | Ep. 32

Wondering how to get your YouTube channel unstuck? I'm here to help you identify the snags holding your channel back. From understanding analytics to improving watch time and subscriber count, learn the strategies to boost your channel's growth. Let's breathe new life into your content and business!

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Transcript

32 Get Your Slow Channel UNSTUCK | Ep. 32

Meredith: [00:00:00] So is your YouTube channel stuck? Is it just kind of spinning its wheels or is it dead in the water and you need to revive it a little bit? Give a little bit of CPR, a little bit of mouth to mouth.

How do you know it's stuck? How can you get it unstuck? We're going to talk about it here on episode 32 of video brand infusion. My name is Meredith and I'm here to help you infuse the best video marketing strategies into your business. So that you can build your thriving video brand and ultimately your thriving business online with YouTube.

And I do have a little bit of a head cold, some congestion. So if you can't tell from my voice, um, then congratulations, but we're going to continue on and record this episode anyway. So have you ever had a kid or been that type of kid who has so much energy and you just run and, um, Run around in circles and you're running and running and running and there's like some adult probably a parent [00:01:00] You or your parent who just wants you to stop running around just like sit down Hold still for just a minute.

And so they grab the back of your shirt And like for just a moment, have you ever seen this happen? Like in the wild for just a moment, the kid is sort of like running in place, but not really moving because there's something that snagged their shirt. Some parent came along and snagged their shirt. I see this happen with my Members of video brand Academy and my clients and students all the time where you're uploading videos, you're like, I'm just going to keep going.

I'm going to be consistent. I'm going to upload my videos and you're spending all this time and energy. But then when you open your analytics or you open your YouTube creator studio app, your analytics in the app, you're like, Okay, but nothing's really happening. I'm not really, I'm not seeing any [00:02:00] fireworks.

Um, it's just like, okay, YouTube's like, cool, you uploaded a video. Good job. You did it. And the reason why I bring up the snagging of the shirt is because One of the things I look for in my clients analytics is what is preventing their channel from growing faster or for, for, from growing bigger, faster.

And it always kind of reminds me of the kid who's like, Running, running, running, running, running, and then there's like, whoop, this like little snag that's just holding them back and if the snag was released, they would actually get somewhere.

I've been there. I've been in that, uh, space of like, I'm just going to keep uploading my videos and I'm going to hope that something happens. I just got an email today from somebody who said. I'm waiting for my channel to blow up and I thought, okay, yeah, me too. I'm waiting [00:03:00] for my channel to blow up. Um, how do we make that happen?

Well, the answer is we keep going and keep improving and eliminating the roadblocks that are holding our channel back, eliminating the things that are preventing that are snagging us from. Getting more views from gaining more subscribers from getting our channel and our content out in front of more people and Yes, uploading videos and keeping going and staying consistent is The ultimate strategy, is it possible that there are a few tweaks, a few little snags that might be happening right under your nose that you just haven't noticed yet?

That if you removed those snags, if you made some tweaks, you could be spending the same amount of effort on your brain. Videos the same amount of time on your videos, [00:04:00] but actually get the results that you're looking for. Like seeing an increase in subscribers, an increase in views, an increase in impressions, an increase in revenue.

So this episode is for you. If when you open your analytics or your creator app, you are seeing. the down gray arrows that YouTube gives you or a black line. Okay. If you open your analytics and you're seeing green up arrows or green check marks, then you're doing pretty good. You're, you're doing pretty good.

Could you grow faster? Yes. Could your channel be doing better? Probably. We all could be doing better, right? And we all want our channels and our businesses to grow faster. But this episode is for you. If you, Genuinely are stuck, meaning when you open your analytics, you have the down arrows and it's very helpful for YouTube to give us the arrows to give us those indicators.

Um, [00:05:00] because it's comparing your metrics to your own metrics. It's, you know, it's not comparing your metrics to like some average YouTuber metrics or something. It's saying, okay, in the last 28 days, your channel is doing better or worse or about the same as the previous 28 days. And that's really, we are really only ever competing with ourselves ultimately on YouTube.

So I love the arrows. I love the indicators, but YouTube analytics doesn't really tell us what's causing the down arrow or what we can fix. They might say like, Hey, you need to get more impressions. Okay, how do we do that? And what does that even mean? The analytics doesn't really tell you that.

So there's a couple of key areas in your analytics that you can look for those snags, look for the roadblocks, look for the things that are preventing your channel from [00:06:00] growing faster. so number one first, You have to clearly decide or define what exactly is stuck.

Are we talking about subscribers? Are we talking about views? Watch time? Or are we talking about revenue? Are we talking about all of those things? We have to figure out what does stuck mean. if you have a gray down arrow on all four of those things, if you could get one of them to be the green up arrow, which one would you choose?

There's no wrong answer, but 

 knowing that the real question is. What is causing the stuckness? Why isn't it getting more higher, better, right? So let's just think about subscribers, just like the actual, um, subscriber count.

 You know, gaining subscribers sort of comes naturally. [00:07:00] We're in this place, you know, on YouTube, we're in the era of YouTube where everybody knows what YouTube is. Like 10 years ago, it was very common to, you know, in your videos to tell people, you know, hit subscribe, don't forget to hit subscribe, make sure you hit subscribe.

And I, we still see people doing that. People do that. I stopped doing that because. It's very redundant and people already know how YouTube works. I do, you know, every once in a while I do say, um, you know, I create a lot of tutorials about Descript, so make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss any of them.

Like sometimes I do things like that, but it's not in every, uh, video and, um, and I don't do it in my podcast videos. You guys know how to subscribe to a channel. I don't have to. I don't have to tell you that, but you know, what's really interesting is your success on YouTube really has nothing to do with [00:08:00] people hitting the subscribe button anyway.

So just a quick side note, but let's, but let's talk about it because seeing that number go up, seeing your subscriber count go up is An indicator that people like your content. They want to hear more from you and um, they're, they're, they're feeling like, uh, uh, sort of like a reciprocal sort of relationship there.

You gave value or entertainment or something, and they're going to reciprocate by hitting that subscribe button because they already know how to hit the subscribe button. Um, because. YouTube has been around long enough, right?

So if you're looking at your analytics and you're like, I got the gray down arrow on. my subscriber count. What do I do? How do I fix it? A couple of questions that you might want to ask yourself by looking at your analytics is, [00:09:00] um, how, how long has it been down? Are we just talking about the last 28 days?

How much is it down? It's like, because you could be down by just like one or two. Um, with the way the arrows work, you could be barely down and it will give you a gray down arrow. Right. Um, one thing I like to sometimes do is compare, um, like, Oh, again, 50 subscribers this week or something. Um, like boohoo, it wasn't a hundred.

Right. And then compare, well, but like a year ago, how many would I have gained in a week? Oh, only 25. Oh, okay. Well, 50 doesn't sound so bad now, does it? So you have to kind of be cognizant of like the time period that you're looking at. Yeah. And. What changed within your own, um, like, did you, did you upload fewer videos?

Did your viewers get fewer, did your view, did your videos get fewer, less watch [00:10:00] time? Um, You know, maybe not as many people actually saw your content or watched as much of your content. And so it would make sense that your subscriber count would be down then, right? Because not as many people were in front of your content to be there to hit the button.

 So how do we figure out how to get your channel unstuck? How to get your gray down arrows? Into green up arrows. Well, I have something, um, that I'll show you that I give out inside video brand academy called fix my channel flow chart. And it's just kind of like a, it's the same, uh, it's kind of like a decision tree that when I'm on a call with a client or a student or, you know, anybody who's asking me like, Oh, this thing is not working.

My subscribers aren't, I'm not gaining subscribers. My views are down, whatever. [00:11:00] I can just go through this decision tree and figure out where the biggest snag is. Where's the, what's the biggest thing holding you back?

Now, I will say right now, as of the time of this recording in late 2024, one of the biggest snags that I see happening with my clients, students, and members of Video Brand Academy is When you're mixing shorts content and long form content, it's really not working out for people. I don't know how else to say, please stop doing that.

And if it is working for you. Let me know in the comments because I want to pick your brain. I want to figure out how you're getting healthy views on your long form videos and healthy views on your short form videos because all I've seen for myself, for my clients and students and anybody whose analytics I [00:12:00] have looked at over the last 365 days or longer, it's showing almost like the long form.

Views cancel out the short form views in terms of like, um, gaining momentum in the algorithm. So if that's the case for you, if you're doing both, you have to stop doing both. I know. I don't, I don't, I it's, it hurts to say that I don't want to say that because a lot of people are like, Oh, shorts, they're all the rage.

They're all the rage, except that you have to do, you have to, you have to do them once a day. You have to get millions of views in order to get the same, uh, kind of like return on the investment.we don't have to turn this into long form versus short form, but I, I just wanna point out, if you're doing both on your channel, there's a good chance that they're canceling each other out

and but most of the time [00:13:00] people are looking at, you know, my subscribers are down, my revenue is down and my, and so therefore my channel is stuck, right? My channel is in dead. Most, most of what I see when I'm seeing like down, uh, subscribers down revenue is like, it's just like down a little bit. It's, it only has to be down the tiniest amount for YouTube analytics to give you the gray down arrow.

It's, they're pretty sneaky like that, right? It only has to be down by like one in order for that gray arrow to show up. So look at the actual numbers, compare the actual numbers, but almost all the time, what the snag that is holding channels back is watch time. Not necessarily for every channel, but most of it is.

Watch time, which is the [00:14:00] total amount of time that people are watching your content for. So I see this a lot with clients who are making like three and four and five minute long videos. Um, which I think used to work on YouTube and I know now YouTube is going to three minute shorts back to the shorts thing again.

Um, we're not going there. Uh, but But I think five minute long videos used to be, um, like enough to grow your channel on YouTube. I used to make, when I first started my channel and my channel grew really quickly in the first year or two or three, um, I tried to make five minute videos. That was like my target time.

Um, because I didn't want to make super long videos. I didn't have that much time to edit. I had a full time job and two little kids and all of that. So I would make five minute videos, eight minute videos. Like to me, 10 was like, Oh my gosh, a long video. Um, but over the years, over the last 10 years or so, [00:15:00] more watch time has really become a much bigger, and it probably was a big deal back then too, but still.

From my perspective, from my experience, I was still able to grow my channel with those shorter five, eight minute videos. Um, and now what I'm seeing in my clients analytics is it's, it's really just not cutting it because there are other channels, other videos out there that are longer, that are gaining YouTube, more watch time, which is beneficial to YouTube.

So YouTube, You know, it behooves YouTube to get those videos out in the algorithm, in the search results, on the homepage, in the recommended, um, algorithm because that's what's benefiting YouTube. So, uh, it's painful to hear, um, but if your videos are three, four, five, six minutes long and you feel like your channel is [00:16:00] stuck and it's not growing, you might want to try making longer videos.

Making longer videos doesn't have to mean taking more time or spending more time to make videos. Like, you can talk for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, just as easily as you can talk for five minutes. The question is, can you do it in a way that doesn't require you to double or triple or quadruple your editing time, right?

So this is why I like, I teach this, um, concept inside of my 30 days to thriving YouTube channel course, this three by four method of basically make 12 videos in the same amount of time it would normally take you to create one because so many people I see are like, this is how I make my videos.

I record my screen and then I record my face to camera and then my audio is [00:17:00] separate and I have to combine those. And I have a second camera over here and it's like really complicated and really time consuming. And I know that you want to make good high quality videos and maybe you enjoy all of that tech stuff.

I do too. I do too. But I also want to maintain consistency. I also want to grow. my business. And so if you're finding, uh, if you're having trouble finding time to make the kind of videos that you want to create in the way that you want to create them, because your process involves a lot of moving parts, the three by four method is an easy way to, um, To kind of like take a breath and figure out what can you create?

What 12 topics could you create that would be really easy for you to create just talking to the camera without having to do a Whole bunch of b roll and two different camera [00:18:00] angles and all that kind of stuff so my point here is making longer videos does not have to mean Taking way more time to make videos.

Um, this is something I've done here on my channel Actually, you're watching While you're, you're watching or listening to this as a podcast episode, I wanted to be able to make longer videos with, with like the, the easiest, uh, method, the easiest workflow possible, which to me was like, Oh, let's just do a video podcast.

I can just talk to the camera. People can either like it or not like it. And people generally do like it. Um, I mean, my. My views do pretty well, I think, for a just talking to the camera type of a video. they are longer. So they're gaining more watch time.

YouTube likes that. And so, it's I'm making it easier for YouTube [00:19:00] to share my videos far and wide. Versus if it was only 3 5 minutes long. Right? And so the amount of time, you know, does it take me longer to make a 20 minute podcast episode than a three to five minute video? Maybe it depends on the video, right?

But like it's the payoff. I'm looking at the payoff, not just the time that I'm putting into it. It's, it's what I'm getting back out and getting my videos. in front of more people is a payoff for me. It's a payoff for you too. That's why you're watching this, right? Now if you're like, okay, well my videos are 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes long, Meredith and I'm still not getting enough watch time, getting views, not getting watch time. What, what's going on here? The other kind of, um, part of the watch time snag is how long are people watching your videos.

So, like, you could have a 20 minute long video, but if people only watch for like 30 [00:20:00] seconds and then leave, That's not doing you any favors at all, right? And so YouTube does give you a 30 second retention metric if you go into the analytics for each individual video, which can be very eye opening and you can kind of see are people really dropping off.

So your first 10 seconds, 30 seconds a minute are really, important. Um, for me personally, the way that I have improved my 30 second retention is to have a short hook and then get right into the content. I don't really, um, I don't do a lot of over explaining in the intro. I don't have a long, like, thing where I introduce myself.

I'm, like, there's no logo animation thing happening. Nothing like that. I am, I want to just get straight into the [00:21:00] content and that seems to work pretty well for me. Um, but, but that's me. That's my personality and just. The way that I choose to tackle that problem and that has worked for me. It might work for you too.

When I look at Clients videos and I actually go in and watch the video You know, there's times where I'm like, okay Look the topic of the video is X Y Z and you don't mention X Y Z until 2 minutes and 45 seconds into the video Okay, so like that's a problem and if If that's you and your, if your watch time is fine, then your watch time is fine.

You don't have to change anything. But if your watch time is not fine, if you have like. 10 percent of your viewer retention or even 20 percent like you got to get that number up somehow. And a lot of times it's the beginning of the video. It just has to be tighter and start getting to the content, um, [00:22:00] faster.

Edit out the fluff, basically.

Now, usually my go to recommendation for anybody, client, student, member, video brand academy, whatever, is go and look at your top 10 videos happening on your channel right now. It's in your analytics. Go to analytics, scroll down a little bit, your top 10 videos for the last 28 days.

What are they?this can be very telling because YouTube is telling you, Hey, in the last 28 days, these are the videos that have gotten the most views on your channel. And a lot of times what happens is you, you're that little kid, you're running around, you're running around, you're putting in all this energy.

And all this time and all this effort, but then for some reason something is snagging you and you feel like you're running in place. A lot of times you go and you open up your top 10 videos in the last 28 days and you realize none of them are videos that [00:23:00] you've published, like, recently at all. Which is really, uh, it does not feel good.

It doesn't feel good when you know, like, you feel like you've been putting out your best content. You've been Deliberately trying to improve and you've been putting the time and energy in and your top 10 videos are videos from like three years ago, or they're all shorts. Again, back to the shorts conversation, you're like putting out these long form videos are 20 minutes long.

Oh, all this time and effort and you, you open up your analytics and you're like, Oh, it's all the shorts. And, but that's only looking at views. Okay. That's, that's giving you your top 10 videos in terms of the views that they're bringing to your channel. It does not look at the subscribers that they're bringing or the total watch time that they're bringing.

It's just looking at views. But a lot of times. We, what I see is that the topics of those top 10 videos [00:24:00] really don't match the topics that you've been publishing more recently. And so for whatever reason, those topics are bringing viewers to your channel, even though those videos might be a year old or three years old, five years old, even those topics are still bringing people to your channel today, which is amazing.

That's one of the reasons why YouTube so powerful for growing your audience as a business owner. It's amazing. But if those topics are not aligned with your newer video topics, then. There's a disconnect there and your newer topics just like aren't getting out, you know, into the algorithm, so to speak, because your older videos are attracting people with different topics and but they're doing it currently today.

Does that make sense? You're, you're, Videos, your channel is getting views today, but on topics that are not [00:25:00] related to the content you're publishing today. So the content you're publishing today is a lot of time and energy spent on videos that aren't really doing anything at all for you. in terms of growing your channel.

And that's why you see the down gray arrows. And that's why you feel like your channel is stuck or dead and needs to be revived.

 and the question you might be wondering is, okay, so how do we fix all this? Well, we only really talked about a couple of things. We talked about watch time. We talked about like the overall watch time, 30 second retention. We talked about whether your new content really matches up with the content that is, you know, considered your top content on your channel. 

another really common snag for people is in what's thumbnails. And, um, this can be really frustrating because thumbnails can sometimes. feel like an insignificant part of the YouTube process, but they are actually very [00:26:00] important to getting people through the door, so to speak, like through to click through and watch your actual video.

Like if you think about a brick and mortar store in, you know, downtown Main Street, small town USA, like where I live, um, people have to know what's inside in order to be interested in going in, right? So if you have, uh, visitors, tourists, people in town walking down the street, you have to put stuff in the windows.

You have to make it look inviting. You have to make it look interesting, intriguing. You need to make them stop and go, Hmm. Let's go in there. Let's check it out. And it's kind of that same way with your thumbnails and thumbnails strategy is like a whole pseudoscience. It's it really is a whole science.

There's a lot of psychology happening there,

but one of my favorite snags to look for is not necessarily your overall click through rate on [00:27:00] your channel or even the click through You know, each individual video, but look at, if you go to your advanced analytics, you can see every video, you can see the number of impressions that they get, which is the number of eyeballs.

Um, if it showed up on a homepage or a search result or the sidebar, those are impressions. When you have videos that have a lot of impressions, relatively speaking, you know, a lot, meaning, Compared to the rest of the videos, you have a video that has a lot of impressions and then look at the click through rate and instead of trying to improve all of the thumbnails on your channel or go through and redesign all of your thumbnails in Canva, only focus on the ones that are getting good impressions that are still currently today getting good impressions.

Those are the only thumbnails that really are, um, like putting the work in to try and prove them. Those are the only ones you can actually [00:28:00] pay off for you. Because there's the only ones that are getting eyeballs, right? So that makes sense and that's an easy thing that you can tweak but it's a really common snag that um, you could you could put a lot of time and energy into trying to like fix the snag and it doesn't change anything because you're Changing thumbnails and videos that aren't even really getting impressions.

 And speaking of impressions, again, if you're, uh, if you're, if you're, if your channel stuck, if you're showing down gray arrows for everything, um, If your, if you feel like your click through rate is okay and your thumbnails are okay and you feel like, yeah, doing everything right, doing everything the gurus say, and your watch time is good and your 30 second retention is good, people aren't getting bored and you feel like you're doing that right, Right.

The next thing, the next [00:29:00] kind of, um, step that I would look at if your channel is truly stuck with the down gray arrows is your impressions. And, um, this is, I think, one of the probably simplest things to tweak, actually. Because. As long as you can go and identify, do a little bit of keyword research and identify some topics, some keywords, search phrases in your niche that are getting search volume, people are searching for them.

They're not, there's not a lot of competition out there for them. You've got a golden ticket topic. That's how I like to call it. It's a golden ticket topic. It's a low hanging fruit. Um, Lots of people searching, not a lot of videos out there on this topic. If you are struggling with impressions, easiest thing you can do is go after those keywords.

[00:30:00] And this happened recently on my channel. I wasn't struggling with impressions, but I, um, I was doing some keyword research. I was actually, and I might've, I may have told this story before, but I was not doing keyword research. I was doing research to figure out what the best AI note taking app was because I use Otter, but I know there's other apps out there.

I wanted to, before I, you know, before my annual subscription to Otter was going to charge, I was like, is this really the best one out there? I did a little bit of research and I found, zero videos on this topic of what's the best AI note taker out there. I found nothing and I thought that's really strange because this is YouTube.

I can't be the very first person to be interested in this topic. Um, so then I did a little bit of keyword research, opened up vidIQ, fired up vidIQ and I typed it in and I saw, Ooh, there's quite a bit of surges on this, [00:31:00] but there's really no videos on it. Okay. Um, or at least no videos that were actually like helpful.

So I was like, Hmm, okay, well I can do a video on that. And it's, it's a little, it's on the fringes of my niche. You know, I don't, I don't talk, I mean, I talk a little bit about AI, but not a ton about AI. I don't talk about note takers. I really don't talk about zoom calls and meetings and things like that.

So, It's on the, I would say it's on the fringe of my niche. And wouldn't you know it that AI note taking video took right off because of SEO and the algorithm. And it continues to getting comments and I'm getting emails from AI note taking companies that are like, Hey, um, we'd like you to make a video about our AI note taker, please.

Um, you know, It just kind of like, uh, snowballs and snowballs all [00:32:00] because I made a video that had a high search volume and low competition. That's all you're looking for. And all of the search, um, keyword research platforms out there, vidIQ, TubeBuddy, MorningFame, KeywordsEverywhere, um, You're just looking for low hanging fruit, high search, low competition.

If you're struggling with impressions, I would start there.

Now I've basically touched on everything that I talk about and teach in Video Brand Academy with this Fix My Channel flow chart. Um, this little decision tree that I made for myself and then gave to my members. And we have a ton of training for each of those areas of, um, Increasing your impressions, increasing your watch time, um, increasing your revenue, getting more clicks, getting more visible, um, lots of training, lots of strategies, lots of shortcuts in there for achieving all of those [00:33:00] things for yourself.

If you're interested in getting your hands on the Fix My Channel flowchart that's inside of the YouTube roadmap, Um, I'll put a link down below to Video Brand Academy wait list so that you're first in line to know when the doors are open again. I just welcomed like almost 30 new people, 

so I'm excited for the doors to be open again, probably one more time before the end of the year so that you can get your channel unstuck, breathe some life into it, do a little CPR, a couple chest compressions. and maybe a little bit of mouth to mouth and kind of get your channel going again for the next year.