10 Mistakes YouTubers Make and How You Can Avoid Them

Beginning creator's first starting out, and even long-time creators, on YouTube can often struggle with racking up the views and subscribers and aren’t sure what to do about it. To help those that want to increase their YouTube influence and subscription numbers, Benji Travis and Sean Cannell have outlined 10 mistakes that YouTuber's make and how you can avoid them.

Check out the full YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNKQOi-k50g&t=165s

Here’s a rundown of the mistakes they go over in the video and how you can avoid them yourself”

1. Not Looking into the Lens

One of the quickest ways of getting people to subscribe to your channel is to connect with them on a personal level and you do that by making eye contact with them like you are in a conversation with them. If you’re not looking into the lens, people will feel disconnected from you and even makes your video feel a little awkward. “In a real example of this is imagine you’re you’re talking to your friend, but they’re looking at your forehead,” says Travis. “How awkward would that be and that translates to video as well.”

2. Spamming Comments

We’ve seen this all over YouTube. YouTuber creators commenting on popular videos from popular creators asking people to check out their channel, basically promoting their channel on someone else’s channel. Travis and Cannell recommend that you don’t do this and instead engage in conversations rather than blatantly promoting your channel. “You vibe with people. You watch other people’s videos and you leave comments … and you let them discover your stuff,” says Travis. So instead of asking for subscriptions through sub-for-sub comments, add value to your stuff by engaging with other channels’ content.

3.  Bad or Confusing Video Titles

One of the most important aspects that you need to nail with your videos, especially if you are just starting out is to have good titles. Travis says the he sees a lot of beginners copying what other popular YouTubers are doing with their titles or using their channel’s name in their video names and he doesn’t feel that’s a good approach. “You need to be having searchable content be part of that first part of the title,” Travis says. Cannell agrees, “It’s kind of like you don’t want to use insider language because there isn’t a bunch of insiders yet.” Make titles that are easy to search and find.

4. Being Inconsistent

This would mean that you aren’t posting continually. To increase the attention around your channel, you need to be posting consistently. Travis strong says that it is so much be if you post one video a week for ten weeks and it is to post ten videos in one week and disappear for the next nine.

5. Weak Intros

It’s true that one of the most important parts, if not the most important, of your YouTube video is the first five to ten seconds. This is the time that people decided whether or not to watch your video and unfortunately many either make their intros too long or may not even include one. Start off clearly stating what your video is right at the get-go.

6. Using a Distracting Background

This is a simple mistake to fix. If your background happens to be cluttered, you should clean it so it isn’t taking the spotlight away from you. You never watch to be competing with your background for the attention. If you can’t for some reason clean the area you are in, you can always go film somewhere that’s less distracting.

7. Having Bad Audio, Video and Lighting

By this mistake, Cannell makes it clear that they aren’t telling you to go out and buy a new camera, rather you should just be “thoughtful about shooting in a quiet place so that audio is good … be thoughtful about shooting during daylight in front of a window so that the lighting is good … and thinking about your video quality.” He later says that you should always be looking to improve your audio, video and lighting anyway you can, whether that be in the places you are shooting or with the equipment you are using.

8. Having Low Energy

This is kind of a given, but people aren’t interested in watching someone that doesn’t engage them. To avoid boring your audience, always have energy and passion in your videos that will give people a reason to keep coming back to see you.

9. Monetizing Too Early

Travis and Cannell suggest boosting you influence before monetizing. You don’t want to distract your audience with ads before you have a big influence on them. Making money comes after you have a good following.

10. Being too Impatient

Lastly, know that building a successful YouTube channel takes a lot of time. Don’t give up and keep at it. The more you do, the better you will get and you’ll begin to have a bigger impact on your audience.

If you want to learn how you can have an even bigger impact on your YouTube Audience, check out a few personality tips from YouTuber’s Nick Nimmin and Brian G Johnson.
 

Sean Berry
Sean Berry
Sean Berry is Videomaker's Managing Editor.

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