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Want to create YouTube thumbnails that grab people’s attention? If so, this is the right video for you. I’ll reveal how I create attention-grabbing thumbnails that result in more views, engagement, and subscribers.
Thumbnails are important because that’s how people see most YouTube videos before watching them. The better the thumbnail looks, the more people will click on the thumbnail to discover what you offer in your video.
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The impact a successful YouTube channel has on a brand can no longer be questioned. The social media behemoth attracts over 1 billion unique visitors to its platform every month, and some YouTubers now generate full-time incomes because of this traffic. With success stories of certain channels bringing in six figure incomes, more people have looked at YouTube as a way to market their brands. However, as more people use YouTube from a business standpoint, more methods get mixed up and misconceptions lead to mistakes. These are seven mistakes that you must avoid so you continue to grow on YouTube.
#1: Not Uploading Enough Videos
Uploading YouTube videos at a consistent rate allows your channel to remain active and give your subscribers a good experience. The moment you stop uploading YouTube videos at a consistent rate, you will lose some of your subscribers, and your account’s growth will halt. In order to avoid the stagnation of your account’s growth, you must upload numerous videos at a consistent rate. The amount of videos you should upload depends on your channel and style. With that said, every YouTuber should upload and publish one video every week. Some people may feel capable of uploading and publishing two YouTube videos every week. The more YouTube videos you upload to your channel, the more choices you give your subscribers and potential subscribers. While you give your audience more options, you must ensure value in all of your videos. If the people in your audience do not appreciate the options you made available for them, then they will look for someone else. On YouTube, it is easy for someone to find videos just like yours. That is why your first impression in terms of value is so important for doing well on YouTube.
#2: Exclusively Uploading Short Videos
For some people, uploading short YouTube videos is their style. However, the longer videos tend to perform better on YouTube’s search engine. Longer videos tend to outperform shorter videos because YouTube uses minutes watched as an essential metric to rank its videos. It is better from a SEO standpoint when a visitor watches 10 minutes of a one hour video than it is when someone watches a three minute video from start to finish. Retention rate matters too, but the minutes watched metric is more significant for YouTube SEO.
#3: Bad Audio
The audio of your videos has an impact on how people perceive your channel and brand. If you have bad audio in your videos, people will find it difficult to listen to your videos even if you offer great advice or good humor. The way your videos sound is just as important as the value within the actual videos. If you don’t have any microphone, then your audio is decent at best. I use the Yeti Microphone for my videos, and many of the highly successful YouTubers use the microphone for their YouTube videos and training courses.
#4: Not Asking For Subscribers Or Comments
At the end of every YouTube video, don’t be afraid to ask your audience to subscribe and comment. The best way to get something is to ask for it, but you don’t want to beg either. There is a difference between saying “Please subscribe” and “Please, please, please subscribe.” I have an annotation that shows up during all of my videos enticing people to subscribe, and at the end of my videos, I encourage interaction and subscriptions. I want to make sure the people who appreciated my video the first time can easily get notified about my other videos and have a conversation with me.
#5: Branching Out Too Far On One Channel
As you get more experience with uploading and publishing videos, it will become tempting to branch out and create a broad channel. Creating a broad channel is one of the worst mistakes to make on YouTube. When you make a broad channel, you confuse your channel’s identity which will result in fewer subscribers. Let’s say you upload some videos about sports, some videos about fashion, and some videos about gadgets. It would be difficult to gain an audience what that channel because viewers won’t know what niche your channel fits into. Instead of creating one broad channel, create a series of specific channels with one clear niche. By creating channels with clear niches, it will be easier for you to build a strong following on YouTube.
#6: Not Breaking Your Channel Into Categories
As you upload more videos, you will get into specific areas within your niche. Getting into specific areas within your niche will fulfill specific needs and desires that your viewers have. However, your viewers won’t want to scroll through all of your videos to find the one video they are looking for. You can make it easier for your viewers to find what they want by breaking your channel into categories.
I have a digital marketing channel, but since there are various components that go towards successful digital marketing, I create different categories based on the videos I have done. I have a social media category and a blogging category because I know that some of my subscribers care more about my social media advice and other subscribers care more about my blogging advice. Breaking my channel into categories makes it easier for both of those subscribers to find what they are looking for in a time effective manner.
#7: Not Sharing Your YouTube Videos On Your Other Social Networks
Just because you put a video on YouTube does not guarantee it will get thousands of views let alone a few million. In order to get more views from YouTube’s search engine, you must generate some of the buzz on your own. When I upload a new YouTube video, I always tweet it and promote it on my other social networks. I have even started sharing my YouTube videos with my email list. I share my YouTube videos with the audience I have already built so more people see the video, and as a result, my audience grows.
In Conclusion
YouTube is still a leading social network, and optimizing it for your brand’s growth will put you in contact with a new audience. You can use the audience you already built to jumpstart your YouTube channel’s growth. By avoiding these common mistakes, YouTube growth will be smooth sailing, and the results will be more impactful for your business.
What are your thoughts on using YouTube for your brand? Do you make any of these mistakes with your YouTube strategy? Do you recommend any other mistakes we should avoid on YouTube? lease share your thoughts and advice below.
When YouTube made its debut, it was uncontested. If you wanted to upload a video, you went to YouTube. No questions asked. Over 1 billion users later, YouTube is still popular, but unlike in the past, YouTube now faces competition. Vimeo was the first competitor, and YouTube dominated. Twitter’s acquisition of Vine and Instagram’s 15 second videos to compete with Vine provided social media users with new ways to watch and upload videos that had nothing to do with YouTube. Sure, YouTube still thrived after Vine and Instagram, but what about now?
Meerkat and Periscope are now on the scene for real-time videos. Facebook is now an option for people who want to upload their videos to the web. Expect Pinterest to roll something out in the next year or two for video uploads.
I would graduate college in 2020, and a lot has changed on social media ever since high school started (I can only wonder what adults think about the changing world). One of those changes is social networks trying to copy each other while trying to be unique. Facebook now uses hashtags. YouTube now uses cards. Twitter’s update resembled Facebook’s update. More social networks are looking at YouTube’s empire and wondering, “Where are our videos? Why do we have to rely on YouTube?”
If you built your entire presence on YouTube, then you don’t have to worry just yet. YouTube’s saving grace is its age and Google power. It is already known that Google favors YouTube videos in its search engine. Moreover, the most popular videos on the web are on YouTube. If everything remained as is, YouTube would survive for my college graduation. It would still be a cool social network that people would visit for many years to come.
In the last two years, many video-focused social networks came into existence, and well-known social networks provided the option to their users. Vine now has millions of users while Meerkat and Periscope went viral days after they were released (I personally believe Periscope will be the superior of the two). Instagram and Facebook combined have over 1.25 billion users. Again, if everything remained the same, YouTube would definitely survive, but in this day in age, rapid innovations happen fast and often. In 2016, there will probably be another social network based on uploading videos. Twitter and Facebook both own multiple social networks capable of uploading videos without relying on YouTube. These social networks make it easy for users to upload videos via mobile. On YouTube, that’s a little complicated.
It is quite common for teens to migrate from social networks with parents to other social networks with fewer parents. That’s one reason why millions of teens migrated from Facebook to Instagram. YouTube is a place where parents go. My dad watches a YouTube video every day, and there is a zero percent chance that my dad is the only parent who watches at least one YouTube video every day. Teens already migrated to Vine. As Meerkat and Periscope get better, they may go over to those platforms and spend less time on YouTube. Let’s not forget that at one point, MySpace was the largest social network around.
For now, YouTube is safe. However, with innovation constantly on the horizon, YouTube must make changes so it can remain the top dog. YouTube must come up with an easier way for people to record and upload videos through their mobile devices. One of the annoying parts about YouTube is that you have to upload the video through something like iMovie, your computer’s camera, or ScreenFlow, and then upload that video to YouTube. On the latest social networks that specialize in videos, you can record a video right on the social network and then publish the video right form the social network. The entire process saves you a few steps.
YouTube allows live streaming, but the live streaming needs to be easily accessible to any YouTuber. My suggestion would be the ability to create videos within YouTube and a button that allows you to decide whether to do a live stream or not. YouTube needs to change in some way, and in particular, mobile optimization. More people nowadays use their mobile devices than their laptops.
I think the chances of YouTube surviving and thriving after my graduation and beyond are high, but the danger exists. By responding to the danger now while it is still far ahead in the game, YouTube should have a strong future. What are your thoughts on YouTube’ status? Do you believe apps like Meerkat and Periscope are the real deal or fluff? Please share your thoughts below.
100,000 followers may seem like a lot. If they’re fake, that’s not good. Even if all 100,000 followers are real, if they don’t share your content, subscribe to your blog, know who you are, or buy one of your products, that’s not good.
Virality shows up every once in a while. YouTube videos get millions of views. That Hump Day video from Geico is hilarious. Then, there’s the, “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.” That’s good because Geico gets its message out, and people will continue to say, “It’s Humpppp Dayyyy!” The next question would be how many people actually buy Geico insurance just by listening to that commercial.
500 followers may not seem like a lot, but if 100 of those followers bought one of your products, that’s really good.
If the presentation looks good, that doesn’t always mean the quality is there. A first time speaker with an incredible Keynote proves my point. The Keynote is the presentation, but the first time speaker isn’t going to be as influential as the guy or gal who has been speaking for years.
Before you determine whether or not the presentation looks good, or if an idea fits your business, do the homework to find out if that idea is a good fit for your business.
The problem for some people is that they’re focusing on getting the right equipment. If you’re doing a video, this could be getting that awesome white board that Brendon Burchard has. You don’t need to focus on making your web design look perfect.
Instead, you have to focus on doing what you want to do. For my YouTube videos, I don’t have a fancy white board or anything like that. All of those YouTube videos I have done so far are just my Mac Book Pro with iMovie on an ironing board. The only light I get is a lamp attached to a chair. I’m not embarrassed to admit any of this because I’m actually doing videos.
If I waited for the white board and all of the cool equipment that everyone else uses, I wouldn’t have a single video done. Getting the right equipment isn’t important. Being able to work with what you have and actually starting is more important.
Are you getting equipment? You shouldn’t be getting new equipment for something you haven’t even started. Instead, you should just start.
When it comes to a YouTube video or post on a social network, everyone wants to go viral. Virality would give someone a lot of exposure in a quick amount of time. One day, the video has 100 views. Overnight, the video gets 100,000 views. That’s how virality is achieved.
However, the problem with viral is that videos and posts are constantly going viral. The viral video from a week ago gets replaced by another viral video. Interests change very quickly when it comes to viral videos. Videos and posts rarely stay viral for over a week before the next video or post takes over. If you don’t get more traffic and subscribers while you’re viral, where’s the benefit? Nowhere.
Velocity is different. Velocity is when you videos and posts are consistently viewed and shared. You aren’t jumping from 100 views to 100,000 views, but you are getting 5 views a day. Then that turns into 20 views a day. Then that turns into 50 views, 100 views, 500 views, and then 1000+ views every day from a single video or post.
With velocity, you will eventually get to 100,000 views. It will take more time to reach 100,000 views with velocity than with virality. However, velocity will eventually be able to get more views than the viral video. Velocity videos will get shared a lot once they reach 100,000 views (100,000 people know about the video), and then they might even go viral. However, that velocity will make the viral aspect last a lot longer. It won’t go from 100,000 views to a million views overnight, but getting 5,000 views for the same video every day for a month is possible.