How to Start a YouTube Channel for Beginners Tips

I'm about to save you a lot of time, stress, and money, honey!

I have seen too many people set up their YouTube accounts the wrong way where they have to go ahead and convert it to something else later on!

Getting A YouTube Channel Set Up with A Brand Account

Whenever you're setting up your account, I want you to do this thing first: Whenever it comes to building your YouTube channel, the first thing you get to choose from after clicking the “Make Channel button” is do you want it to be a personal account or do you want it to be a brand account? If you are a coach or consultant, I always recommend having a brand account versus the personal one.

When you have a personal YouTube channel, it is tied to your Gmail account so if you wanted to get someone to upload videos for you then you would have to give them your actual Gmail login credentials for them to have access to the YouTube channel. When it is a brand account, all you have to do is just make them a manager very similar to how there are admins or Facebook managers. You can just assign someone as an admin to have access to your page.

Let's be honest, the more traction you get with YouTube you're not going to be doing these things by yourself, right? You're going to want to hire help. You're going to hire maybe a YouTube manager or a VA and you want it to be easy to pass things to them so they can manage it without it impacting you at all! We don't want people all up in our emails, right?! We want it to be easy for us to assign roles to people and delegate tasks out for them.

How to Determine YouTube Content Strategy

The next thing I want you to start putting into place is your content strategy. Whenever it comes to YouTube, I don't want you to just post anything up on YouTube. We are not doing that here, okay? I want you to think about, "What kind of content is going to help me get clients with YouTube?" so I have a framework I recommend you start with whenever you are building out your channel!

The three types of content I recommend are educational, trending, and personal content. Before start making all kinds of this content, there is a strategy. I talk about this a little bit more whenever I have a YouTube Strategy Sprint with clients.

Why Educational Content is Essential on YouTube

Whenever it comes to the educational content, how-to content, or instructional videos, you are giving value to your audience. We need to make sure your educational content is your evergreen content. This kind of video content will help drive traffic to your channel and categorize your channel as a whole!

Whenever we start making video content, we always want to start with the educational content first. That way, YouTube knows, "Oh, shoot, this is a YouTube educational channel," "This is an Instagram educational channel," "This is a money-management educational channel”. We need to be able to make it easy for YouTube to understand where to place us in their algorithm and their search engine.

How to use Trending Content on YouTube

Now, the second type of content is the trending content or the viral type of content. I always use this example of if I am a relationship coach and I am talking about relationships and communication and cheating there was something very popular and trendy with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, and this word Pinkett used called "entanglement.” Wouldn't it be cool to do a video about what is an entanglement and what it means or including Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith inside your YouTube title and using the word "entanglement”? This is how you get people who are interested in that type of stuff! Because they're interested in Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith and they are probably researching on what happened now you're getting people who could be potential ideal clients!

But we don't want to overdo it with trendy content because what happens with these popular topics is sometimes it brings in the wrong people. If you keep on doing viral content all the time, you're going to start building a community of people who do not want to buy from you. They're people who are not your ideal clients!

What we want to do is pad down with the educational content first then add another layer with trending content, and finally, we can start layering in personal content. This is where we can express ourselves more once we've built this community.

How to Use Personal Content

Up to this point, you have been the resource. You have been the guiding light for these people. You have been teaching them, giving them resources, being an educator, and authority. Now you have built traction and a subscriber base. Now, you start becoming more personable and open with them and being relatable. If it matches with your topics, cool if not, it's not the end of the world! It is just a way for us to talk about something other than our channel, and show your audience you are a little bit human and not just a talking head.

But whenever it comes to personal content, we don't want to do a lot of it. To reiterate, start out with educational content within the first month or two then we can add in some trending topics here and there. Finally, maybe one or two personal pieces throughout our quarter strategy.

Determining Your Call to Action

Now you have your content strategy figured out by knowing what kind of content you should be doing and you know what are the frequently asked questions someone should be asking. I want you to now think about what your call to action is going to be.

How are we going to further this relationship with these viewers? Whenever we're thinking about our call to action, I always recommend a lead magnet or some kind of opt-in/freebie that’s going to get your audience onto your email list. That way, you own that contact information and you can start nurturing them on autopilot without you having to be involved in anything. Keep in mind this is going to be what you use for your YouTube videos.

Another call to action you can add to your YouTube channel is having something more community-based. I always recommend sending them to a more community-based platform where they can engage with you in real-time. My community-based platform is Instagram. If you want to see me in real-time, if you want to see my Instagram Stories, or if you want to know more of my thoughts that are just gone and shot off, then Instagram is going to be where you want to go. YouTube is where I educate and Instagram is where most of my real-time content is so I always send people over there because keep in mind, I'm still dropping gems over Instagram, too, honey! But clients find me on YouTube, then they connect with me on Instagram then while I am connecting with them on Instagram I also have the opportunity to convert them there as well.

How to Structure Your YouTube Videos

Now you know how to make your channel, you know what your content strategy should be, and you understand how a call to action works. The next thing I want you to understand is how to structure your YouTube videos! Now, I have my framework whenever it comes to structuring out my videos because this is the real tea: People are not just on YouTube just to hear us talk and just to listen to us. So, we should not be rambling on YouTube because people are coming to us with a problem. Let's solve their problem!

The beginning of your video is the most important part! The first 30 seconds is the most crucial part of your YouTube video because this is going to tell the viewer whether or not they're in the right place. If they think they are not in the right place for one second, honey, they are gone!

I have a helpful framework to ensure you keep your audience engaged throughout the entire video. It's called my HIT framework, H-I-T! The "H" is for "hook". How do we keep their attention and let them know that they're in the right place right then and there? Let's answer the pain point they were searching for. Then “I” for the intro is going to be where you introduce yourself and show you are qualified to talk about this whole thing. You also talk about the “T” transformation saying: "By the end of this video, you're going to learn X, Y, and Z," right? All that in 30 seconds or less.

After you have the hook, intro, and transformation then we go into our talking points. We talk about point one, then point two. Then somewhere in the middle of, maybe you are having an engagement question where you say, "Let me know in the comments X, Y, and Z.” This could be something to where you talk about your freebie if it makes sense, or maybe you ask them something in the comments and you direct them to the comments so they can start engaging with you down there.

After you do your engagement question, now you're going to be ready to finish off your video so include your other remaining points you have to talk about, and then let's talk about this call to action where you are setting these people up afterward! Is it going to be your freebie? Is it your Instagram account or is it your Facebook group? Where do you want them to hang out with you later on?

Afterward, quickly close the video! I want you to be able to quickly close it out because if you make a long, drawn-out closing, people are going to immediately exit the video because they know that you're closing it out and so the easy way for you to make sure that you don't lose watch time is to make your closing a little bit smaller.