Hey family! I hope you are doing well. This week, we’re talking about another growth strategy: YOUTUBE. It actually took me six months to launch my YouTube channel. It wasn’t that it’s especially difficult, but I procrastinated. I found that I was stuck because of my own negative thoughts surrounding doing things that I’m not comfortable with. I mean, I’m really comfortable doing podcasts, but definitely not YouTube. There are things we procrastinate on because of this resistance within ourselves. I realized that the key to getting unstuck is taking time to reflect, acknowledging the negative loops, and acting anyway. Tune in to hear my YouTube experience, my advice for starting on YouTube from scratch, beginner tips, and DOs and DON’Ts. Learn how to create a solid YouTube strategy by visiting JanelleAllen.com/YouTubeGuide.
Hey family! I hope you are doing well. This week, we’re talking about another growth strategy: YOUTUBE.
It actually took me six months to launch my YouTube channel. It wasn’t that it’s especially difficult, but I procrastinated. I found that I was stuck because of my own negative thoughts surrounding doing things that I’m not comfortable with. I mean, I’m really comfortable doing podcasts, but definitely not YouTube.
There are things we procrastinate on because of this resistance within ourselves. I realized that the key to getting unstuck is taking time to reflect, acknowledging the negative loops, and acting anyway.
Tune in to hear my YouTube experience, my advice for starting on YouTube from scratch, beginner tips, and DOs and DON’Ts.
Learn how to create a solid YouTube strategy by visiting JanelleAllen.com/YouTubeGuide.
Episode Quotes
"It's not about the procrastination, it's about why are you procrastinating."
"Procrastination is a symptom of something that we are resisting."
"Video is a great way to connect with your audience and grow your business."
"YouTube is great for discovery, authority, and list building."
"YouTube is all about optimizing and improving over time."
Listen to Learn
01:56 - Recap on guest posting
02:45 - Procrastination and patterns
08:21 - My A-ha! moment
11:19 - Pros and cons of video content
12:42 - Why video on YouTube
16:34 - My YouTube experience and beginner tips
23:27 - YouTube DOs and DON’Ts
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Janelle Allen: Video on YouTube is a great way to grow your business. The first thing that jumps out is YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. Everyone knows YouTube is owned by Google. Google is the number one search engine and YouTube is the second one. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to YouTube to learn how to do something. A lot of people use YouTube for just in time learning or entertainment or watch silly animal videos. The standpoint of being a search engine, YouTube is where you want to be. In fact, if you go to YouTube now or if you go to Google now, it will show videos from YouTube in the search results, right? So why wouldn't you want to show up there? Why wouldn't you want to have content come up in the number two search engine in the world?
Welcome to Level Up Your Course, where we pull back the curtain on what it takes to create learning that transforms lives. You will hear stories from business owners like you who share their success and their struggles. This is not where you come to hear passive income myths, friend. This is where you learn the truth about building a profitable learning platform. I am your host, Janelle Allen, and this is today's episode.
Hey family. Hope that you are doing well. Hope that this episode reaches you in just a space of peacefulness, if not peacefulness, productivity, if not productivity, just doing whatever the hell you want to be doing right now. And I hope that you're well. I hope that you're safe and healthy and all of that good stuff. So this is episode 129 and in this episode we are going to continue with the theme that we've been doing the past few episodes on growth strategies. I get a lot of emails from people who want to create a course, but they're stuck because they feel like they don't have an audience or they have a business and they've got a little bit of flow, but they're not really growing the way that they want to. So this series of episodes is really dedicated to helping you get unstuck, giving you strategies, actionable strategies that you can put into play to grow, to start, whatever your next step is, strategies for you to do that.
So basically what I'm saying is no excuses after these few episodes. You've got, you're going to have several strategies that you can put into play that you can choose from. Pick one and put it into play. So this episode is all about YouTube. We're going to talk about that in a second. If you haven't checked out the past couple of episodes, last episode we talked about an oldie but goodie, which is guest posting. Guest posting is a wonderful way to build your list, particularly if you do it in a strategic way and you find a site with an audience that can learn and and get value from what you have to offer. And it's a larger audience than your own. You can really build your list very quickly with some targeted guest posting. So if you didn't check that episode out, head back to episode 128 to learn about that. Episode 127, we talked about podcasting and today we are going to talk about YouTube, but before we get into that, I'm going to continue something that I did in the last episode because it seems to have resonated with a lot of you and that is we're going to have a mindset moment.
Let's talk about procrastination. Specifically, I want to talk about procrastination and patterns and I will start with me. Okay, so I have been doing a lot of introspection. You know, one of the things I've been very open about is the value of having a therapist. If it's not a therapist, a coach, but just someone who can help you get through your own BS or patterns or negative loops is what I like to call them. They can show up as habits, as patterns, and a lot of times we may even identify these ourselves, right? Sometimes we hide from them, but sometimes we know, but we have trouble breaking free of them. And for me that's something that I've been spending a lot of time on. Just really calling myself out on my own BS and saying, okay, this is a pattern. This is something that I keep doing, or this is something that keeps showing up and looking at what are the triggers and what's really going on underneath when I'm doing this thing.
So procrastination is a great example because if you would have asked me if I was a procrastinator, I would say no if you had asked me that. But I realized, particularly talking about YouTube, I'm going to, which I'm going to come back to, I realized that there are certain things that I will procrastinate on and that usually has to do with some resistance within myself. You know, maybe it's that I don't believe that I can do it or maybe it's that I just really don't want to do it and I've just added something else onto my plate and I'm very willful. So if that's the case, my mind will just put up all these blocks if I really don't want to do something. And the beauty of growing and getting older is you start to know your own BS, right? You start to know what you're doing and why, especially if you take some time to introspect right, to, to reflect on your actions and your feelings.
So procrastination is something that I know a lot of people struggle with and it's really not about the procrastination. It's really about why are we procrastinating? Why are you putting off that thing? If you've been saying you want to do something now for six months or six years, why aren't you doing it? That's the question to ask yourself and just be honest with yourself. It's not as if you have to have this conversation with anyone else if you want to. And that brings me back to just the, the value of having an external person to guide you through. I'm very honest with myself, almost too honest, but if you have a hard time being honest with yourself, then that's when it's super helpful to have a therapist or a coach who can call you out. That is the only way for you to break free, break free of the patterns.
I just had this conversation with my dad. We all have loops that we get stuck in, whether we believe it or not. There's so many times that I have caught myself doing something and thinking that that was the first time I did it or just doing it and then realized later on down the line that I had done that thing before. Whether it's a bad habit or if it's just something small, we kind of get a way of doing things or a way of putting things off or a way of thinking. And those are loops and oftentimes, you know, there's good loops and there's bad loops, or I should say there's healthy loops and unhealthy loops. And oftentimes we really need to be able to break free of those loops. And you really can't break free until you identify them and acknowledge them. And more importantly, identify the triggers and the behaviors associated with those loops.
And procrastination is, in my opinion, just a symptom of something that we're resisting, which is usually part of a bigger pattern. So you know, for me the big takeaway I want to say there is take some time to reflect on your patterns. What are those things that you keep doing over and over? Are you a person who's constantly starting but not finishing? Well, examine why. Do you have some beliefs on self doubt you want to deal with? I don't know. Are you afraid of putting yourself out there? And just keep digging until you really get to the bottom of it. One of the things I will share before we talk about YouTube is the way this showed up for me, the way that I had a big aha moment year was I was invited to speak at a conference. And I don't speak at a lot of conferences because I don't really enjoy conferences.
I kinda am. I'm an, I'm an introvert and I like to just have some me time and conferences feel overwhelming for me. But I said yes to a conference opportunity and the conference ended up being amazing. Okay. So I just want to put that out there. But prior to that, I was so stressed out that I made myself physically sick. I was so stressed out, not about speaking on stage, I don't have a fear of speaking, but just of -- what I realized, I kept saying, well, why am I so stressed? What is this about? I'm not afraid of speaking. I'm not afraid to travel. What is going on? And I realized what it was for me is a discomfort of putting myself out there in a very upfront physical way. And that shows up when I'm asked to speak at conferences or on video. So that's what brings me to YouTube.
That was my aha moment. All of the stress I felt had to do with just putting myself out there in a way that I wasn't comfortable with. I'm comfortable doing podcasting, I'm comfortable doing anything that involves teaching, like workshops. But I learned something about myself, which was if, if someone asked me to come and speak in person, I have this whole narrative for why, you know I shouldn't do it or why I don't want to do it. All of that stuff. So that's a pattern that I had to break that, those negative thoughts that flow through my head and I realized that shows up. That was the reason why it took me six months to launch my YouTube channel. So let's talk about YouTube and what we're going to get into is how -- you know enough about me. We're going to talk about how YouTube is great for you.
If you've been thinking about it. I will share my YouTube experience and why I started sharing content on YouTube. We'll talk about why, why is YouTube important, why should you even consider YouTube? And then I'll get into how to do YouTube the right way. Oh, and before I forget, at the end of this episode, I will give you a link to get some strategy and some additional resources for how to start your YouTube channel. So let's jump in. First things first. Let's just get some things out of the way. When it comes to YouTube video in and of itself, not just YouTube. Video is scary. For some people, it seems like they do it flawlessly and there -- it seems so easy. But for a lot of us, myself included, video can be scary and I don't mean you know, doing screen cast or something like that.
I mean putting yourself out there on a platform like YouTube can feel very scary. So I just want to acknowledge that. Video also feels like a lot of work and frankly it's, it is more work than audio. So those are a couple of things that can get in the way of you putting yourself out there using video, whether it's presentation or just the work involved that is making it feel overwhelming for you. But on a positive note, video can be really fun, especially if you keep it simple. And we'll talk more about that in a moment. Once you kind of get a rhythm, video is fun and it's a great way to connect with your audience. It's also a great way to grow your business. In fact, video -- and this is kind of getting into why YouTube. So let's talk about why video on YouTube is a great way to grow your business.
The first thing that jumps out is YouTube is the number two search engine in the world. Everyone knows YouTube is owned by Google. Google is the number one search engine and YouTube is the second one. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to YouTube to learn how to do something. A lot of people use YouTube for just in time learning or entertainment or watch silly animal videos. The standpoint of being a search engine, YouTube is where you want to be. In fact, if you go to YouTube now or if you go to Google now, it will show videos from YouTube and the search results, right? So why wouldn't you want to show up there? Why wouldn't you want to have content come up in the number two search engine in the world? The second reason that you should consider YouTube is because it is an easy way to start teaching if you are not ready to commit to a course.
I had a workshop with Alex Hillman and he asked me this question. He asked me, well, what are some ways people can start without creating a course if they're not ready? And YouTube is great for that. You can just record some screencasts, you can use a cool tool like Loom or Drift and you can start teaching and sharing value without creating a course. Third reason that you should consider YouTube is because it is great for discovery, which is just people finding you, right? It's great for authority and it's great for list building. Now for the list building component, you do want to add some strategy there in order to get people to sign up for your list. But I originally didn't even think about YouTube for list building until worked with a few clients and I started to notice a trend. These were clients who had very successful, very profitable businesses that got profitable very quickly and every single one of them, YouTube was their primary marketing channel. And that made me step back and pay attention. So just to recap, reasons you should consider YouTube is, it's the number two search engine in the world. It is a easy way to start teaching if you're not ready to create your course yet and it is fantastic for discovery, authority and list building, and I'll throw in a fourth. The fourth is that faces connect. We know that we connect with faces. You always see when you're looking at marketing, it just feels like that human connection is there when you can see someone's face and YouTube gives you that, you know you have these different levels of connecting on a human level. Audio, you have texts, you can read someone's words, audio, you hear someone's voice and then seeing their face and their expressions and really just connecting with them as a person is the highest and that is almost the last thing you can do before having that in person relationship, right?
And YouTube puts you there. So that's why you want to consider YouTube. Now let me share my YouTube experience before we talk about how to do YouTube the right way. I shared a little bit, but I'll give you more background just so if you're like me and YouTube scares the crap out of you, then here's the story. I mentioned I procrastinated launching my YouTube channel for six months. Six months went by. I kept saying every single month I kept saying the YouTube channel's coming and you know, they always tell you to announce something so that then you have to do it. That doesn't always work, okay. I announced that my YouTube channel was coming and it still took me six months. I mean, I guess it did work because I felt bad every single month that I didn't do it and the reason I didn't do it is because it felt overwhelming.
It felt like, I don't even know where to start. I mean I can Google, but there's so much information. Where do I even start? Because I'm a person who needs to have, not a full plan, but some sort of direction and strategy before I jump in. The reason I'm that way is in the past I've jumped in and then realize I did everything wrong and I just wanted to have a few guidelines. I didn't need a perfect plan. I just needed a few guidelines. I didn't know where to start. So I procrastinated for six months. And also, like I said, I had those patterns underneath. I didn't realize until the end of the year -- it was really a blessing that I was able to attend that conference, cause -- that or speak at that conference. That helped me to understand why I kept putting off my YouTube channel.
And it was fear, you know? It was doubt. So once I realized that, I was like, okay, this thing, I'm doing this thing. The first thing that I did once I finally committed was I reached out to Trina Little who is a YouTube strategist. I think that's Trina's last name. I'll share that in the YouTube resources. But I've reached out to Trina because I didn't know what I didn't know. I have, you know, I hadn't had any experience with YouTube other than posting bonus podcast videos. Right? So I just didn't know like what am I supposed to do? So Trina helped me to have a clear strategy. But even after that, I still procrastinated for a couple of months. Trina gave me the outline, do this, do this, do this. And then I had the plan, but I also had work that I had to do. Like it wasn't just as simple as me jumping in. So the second thing that I did is I tried to make it as simple as possible and shout out to Trina because one of the things that kept getting in my way is I thought I needed to have a fancy camera. You know, I've got to have the right bokeh and blurred background. I just need it to look pro. Trina was like, you don't need to do any of that. Start with a webcam. And it was a webcam that I already had.
So the next thing that I did was just to keep it simple as far as technology. And when I say next thing thing, I mean the thing that helped me to finally launch. So my simple tech set up is a LogiTech C920 webcam. It's an HD cam. It looks great. I use my podcast mic. So the microphone that you're hearing right now is what I'm using for a lot of my videos. Sometimes I have a lav mic, which was a mic that I already owned, so it's just a road lav mic that I can pin to my shirt and that's it. Either one of those microphones and I use my, if I'm using my podcast mic, I just use my existing audio interface for the audio to come in to the computer, so that was it. Nice and simple. Webcam, mic, boom.
The third thing that I did was to go back to the notes that Trina shared with me about strategy. Now here's the thing when it comes to YouTube strategy, you either need to commit to having one or don't. What do I mean by that? Have a strategy, map it out specifically key words and types of content and all of that. Have maybe an editorial calendar for what you're going to create and when or don't. Just go guerrilla style and create videos when you feel like it just on your webcam. There's no real middle ground. I don't advise being in the middle. I think you either just start and know that things aren't going to be perfect, or if you're a person who really needs structure, you have all of that in place. An editorial calendar, clear strategic guidelines for how you're going to launch your channel.
I'll speak more on that in a moment. Last thing, and this is more of a lesson. For a lot of you, I know that overwhelm is a real thing, so it can feel like, because I felt this way, Oh, this is just one more place that I have to be one more piece of content that I have to create. And I felt that way for about two weeks before the light bulb went off. And I remember having a conversation with my virtual assistant. I was like, yeah, we're repurposing these videos on the blog. I'm not going to try to write blog articles, write for my newsletter, do the podcast, and do YouTube. So the blog articles are now going to be basically repurposing the videos on the blog and adding transcripts, and that's completely fine. In fact, that also helps your SEO for your website by having those transcripts.
So that's a lesson and it was such a sigh of relief once that light bulb went off for me. So that was my experience. It really was like, procrastinate, fail, learn, improve, fail, learn, improve. Just that cycle, that cycle. And I think it's the same. It's the same for anyone. Don't worry about it being perfect. So speaking of it being perfect, let's talk about how to do YouTube the right way. Now this is a little bit of a, not a misnomer, but there's no -- unlike guest posting, there's no right way, truly, there's no right way to do YouTube. There's just a good way and a better way. YouTube is all about optimizing and improving over time. You can go to YouTube right now and search for videos on your topic. It will run the gamut as far as style and production quality. Momentum is more important than perfection.
So there's no true right way to do YouTube. So let's go through the do's and don'ts and we'd like to start with the donor and in on a do so don't take six months to procrastinate like I did. Don't do that. Do jot down an idea for your channel and then make a list of -- go to YouTube and make a list of other channels on your topic. Search. Use that search bar and get a list of other channels on your topic, right? You're going to approach this just like this is the same process I tell you for creating a course, you're going to do a little bit of recon or research before you launch so that you have some wheels turning. Second don't. Do not get overwhelmed by how to YouTube, right? I told you that I was stuck with, okay, how do I do this?
Do visit those channels on the list channels on your topic, on the list that you made, and check out the content that they typically post. Look for the categories. Look for the video titles that they use. The key words. Look for which videos are popular. Check out their style. What are the graphic elements they're using? Pay attention to that stuff. Take notes and that way you can start to formulate your own strategy. Alright, third, do not put all your effort and money into a fancy camera. Don't do that. Do start simple. More importantly, make sure you have great audio. Audio is more important than your video quality. You can get away with so-so video, but if people can't hear you or there's a lot of background noise or just interference, they're going to tune out, right? So focus on having great audio. Get yourself a solid, affordable webcam.
You can get one. I think the one that I started out with I, it was like 50 or 60 bucks and just make sure you have a good microphone that's it's going to come in handy for other things, right? If you decide to, to create a podcast or recording audio for your course, a great mic is something that you really want to invest in. Fourth, do not try to create all of your graphics from scratch or get bummed out because you don't have pretty graphics. Do use Canva, which is a free tool. You can, they have paid tiers, but you can start for free to create your thumbnails. If you don't, if you're not good at design, Canva has a tons of templates that you can use and if that still is not working for you, hire someone on Upwork who can do it for you.
But you can use Canva for free to create your thumbnails for your videos. Uh, you can also search Google for other graphics, for inspiration, for graphics, and then there are certain graphical elements that you might need, like a subscribed watermark and all of that stuff. You can create all of it in Canva and if you can't create it in Canva, you could probably find it online. All right, fifth, do not publish your videos without a call to action. You know, we talked about this in other strategies as well. Guest posting, you need to have a call, a strong call to action. Same thing for video. Your videos need to have a call to action. You're doing this for the purpose of growth, so you don't want to just put content out there that is not going to send people to your site or your landing page.
So do create a lead magnet. Put a landing page up for a lead magnet and link to it in your YouTube profile and also in the video description. So sometimes I will post the video without a video description. It's a bad habit. Fortunately, I have an amazing virtual assistant. She's put together a description template for me. Make sure that you have that link in your profile and your video description so that you can get a return on the time that you're spending, that you're investing into your YouTube channel. Alright, number six, do not worry about the perfect video length. There is no such thing. You'll find videos like when you do your research, you're going to see videos that that just are all kinds of lengths, right? From super short, people will tell you, Oh, it needs to be five minutes or less.
Yeah, but there's also videos that are 20, 30 minutes. I've posted some, you know, as long as you make it engaging, which is something that you get better at with time, then you're good. So don't worry about the perfect video length. Do record and then edit, right? You want to edit out the unnecessary stuff and then find the perfect length for getting your point across. People always ask me, well, how long should my videos be? For course videos and it's like as long as it needs to be to get your point across. Yes, people do tend to, their eyes start to glaze over with course videos around 10 minutes, right? YouTube, it's around five minutes, but you can always break those rules if you're using ways to keep your video engaging, right? You're using call-outs and you're having things come on the screen. That's part of your research.
Notice the style that people use when they have long videos. Okay, last one. Do not give up, especially if you feel like, Oh, I don't have the editing software to make my videos pretty. Don't give up. Do Google low cost options that you can use or use something free like Loom. If you're, if you're on a Mac, you have lots of options, right? You can use Loom and Loom allows you to not only record your video, but you can edit as well. It's a little tricky, but you can do it. I've done it. You can use QuickTime, you can record and edit with QuickTime, you can record it, all types of videos in quick time. You can also use iMovie if you're on a Mac. So if you're on a Mac, you're golden. You have no excuses. If you are on a PC, Drift is a good alternative to Loom.
I dunno -- Loom might work on a PC as well. I'm not a hundred percent sure. And you can just just do your Googles, right? Do your Googles for free software for editing. So don't give up if you're like, Oh well I've, I've got all the recording solutions, but man, I don't have any way to edit and make these videos perfect. Do your research, find -- there's something out there for you. Alright, so that's YouTube. YouTube is a great strategy for growing your audience. For discoverability, building awareness around your business and also for growing your list. It's also great for finding clients. If you have services, people who spend a lot of time on your YouTube channel or they're going to connect with you. And they're going to want to work with you. So I highly, highly recommend that you check out YouTube. I should add another don't. Don't try to do everything at once. So don't try to have a podcast and a YouTube channel and you know you're or blogging, writing blog articles, you're doing everything. Don't do that. Pick one. So for me, my primary marketing channel is podcasting. I tried to do both YouTube and podcasts and it just got to be too much. So now I do YouTube. It's, it's not a set schedule for YouTube like it is with the podcast. So do choose a primary marketing channel and just when you have content that's great for YouTube. If YouTube is not your primary, then just post on YouTube when you have content that is great for it, you can batch record your videos and post them or schedule them. So those are my YouTube strategies.
If you want to -- just to wrap up, if you want to check out the show notes, you can find them JanelleAllen.com/129 for episode 129. Once again, that's JanelleAllen.com/129 for episode 129. And I did not forget if you want to find out what gear that I use for YouTube and how to create a rock solid strategy for that discoverability and growing of your audience on YouTube, visit JanelleAllen.com/YouTubeGuide to get that.
All right, one more time. JanelleAllen.com/YouTubeGuide, all one word to get a list of the gear that I use as well as how to create a strategy for growing your audience on YouTube and with that I'm out. I will see you next time. We are going to talk about joint workshops and webinars next time.
All right, my friends, that is my time. Remember, before you can level up your course, you must first level up your mind. As always, thank you for hanging out with me for another great episode. I do not take it for granted. I am Janelle Allen, and this has been Level Up Your Course. Peace.