10 Mistakes New YouTubers Make – and How to Avoid Them
Beginning your journey on YouTube can be an exciting new adventure - one where you can learn about yourself, create a community of followers, and even make money doing something that you love! YouTube has billions of users engaging in content every day, which provides a world of opportunities for growth and community building. Unfortunately for many new YouTubers, much of that enjoyment can be hindered by common mistakes that make the task of building YourTube channel much harder. If you're just getting started, knowing what not to do can give you a leg up on other new creators. Read on for the 10 mistakes new YouTubers make - and how to avoid those mistakes.
1. Not Identifying a Niche
The Mistake: Trying to cover everything and reach everyone by posting random videos that have no focus when there is no intended audience.
How to Avoid It: Identify a niche focusing on what you are passionate about or what you feel you could create valuable content on. You could create videos on tech reviews, beauty or fashion tutorials, gaming, or educational content. Anything that clearly defines your channel will help your subscribers build loyalty and will make it easier for the YouTube algorithm to promote your channel to other potential subscribers.
2. Inconsistency in Uploads
The Mistake: Uploading videos sporadically, or not uploading for long periods of time.
How to Avoid It: Create a content schedule that you will be able to stick to. Consistency is a crucial factor in keeping subscribers engaged and helps YouTube to favor you in its algorithm.
3. Ignoring Video Titles and Thumbnails
The Mistake: using boring/vague titles and terrible thumbnails
How to Avoid: Use catchy, correct titles and very visually interesting thumbnails. Think of these things as an "ad" for your video and critical in improving your click through rate.
4. Using horrible audio and video quality
The Mistake: uploading a video that has crappy lighting, background noise, or poor quality video.
How to Avoid: invest in some basic equipment - i.e. decent microphone, decent camera. This can even be cheap equipment or gear. Always test your setup, and always edit and make your videos professional and of quality.
5. Ignoring SEO (search engine optimization)
The Mistake: not taking advantage of titles, description, and not taking advantage of tags.
How to Avoid: use the relevant keywords your audience will search for. TubeBuddy or VidIQ can help you surface some good tags, or help you optimize your metadata.
6. Ignoring Audience Engagement
The Mistake: Not actively engaging with your viewers, or failing to respond to comments.
How to Avoid it: Engage your audience intentionally. Ask questions, encourage them to leave comments and respond regularly! Engaging your audience will create a sense of community and will also tell YouTube that your content is fostering interactions.
7. Caring About Subscribers Only
The Mistake: Care more about subscriber counts than overall performance.
How to Avoid It: Care more about creating a quality, valuable, engaging, and all-around great video that keeps that viewer watching. Yes, subscriber count is important, but it is not the most important metric (especially for long-term growth). Watch time, retention rate, engagement, etc. are way more important metrics for you to analyze.
8. Don’t Just Wing It; Plan and Script
The Mistake: You think you can "wing-it," and just plan to turn the camera on.
How to Avoid It: Plan outlines or complete scripts, so you can stay focused and convey your message without losing the plot. Planning will reduce rambling, enhance pacing, and help keep your viewers interested.
9. Not Promotion Your Videos Enough
The Mistake: Thinking that just YouTube will get you views.
How to Avoid It: You need to promote your videos through: Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Facebook groups, and any appropriate forums. Cross-promoting will give you exposure, and infinite growth potential.
10. Giving up too soon
The Mistake: Expecting immediate success and giving up on the process because you think the growth is slow.
How to Avoid It: Acknowledge that growth on YouTube takes time and patience. Most successful YouTubers dedicated months and years into advancing their channel. To be more successful in your YouTube journey, track data and make improvements on what you've learned.
Final Thoughts
Every successful YouTuber began with nothing. They had nothing for experience, subscribers, and views. the differentiating factor, is that they made a mistake and learned from it. They learned, grew, and most importantly stayed consistent in their craft. You can speed up the learning process of your journey, and develop a structural foundation if you can avoid these ten mistakes.
Not with standing, your three strongest assets are going to be the Quality of your content, consistently posting, and building a relationship with your audience. Continue making videos, keep on learning and success will come.
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