9 Top Mistakes New YouTubers Make 

There are X most common mistakes we see new YouTubers make when starting their channel. The unfortunate truth is that these mistakes often hinder their growth as a new YouTuber. As a result, their chances of early success on YouTube are much lower. It’s important to understand what these mistakes are and why they hurt your channel so you can avoid them ahead of time. 

1. Promoting Your Videos To Friends & Family

Although your friends and family may be supportive of your new YouTube channel, it’s not always a good idea to promote it to them. This is because they are NOT your target audience. Sure, you may get a few subscribers and views from them, but these views are what is damaging to your channel. 

Our research has shown that friends and family of a creator may leave a positive comment and like the video, but they do not stick around to watch the whole thing. Audience retention and watch time is greatly affected by this in a negative way. These feedback metrics are the most important when telling the YouTube algorithm that your video is good and should be recommended to new viewers. Most of the time, we consider friends and family as friendly supporters, but not loyal viewers.

If you want to promote your channel to friends and family, do it once and only once in the early stages of your channel. Those who actually want to watch your videos will stick around.

2. Constantly Promoting Your Videos On Other Social Medias

There’s nothing wrong with promoting your videos on other social media platforms; such as Reddit forums, relevant Facebook groups, etc. This practice can be advantageous to gain a few subscribers initially. However, similarly to promoting to friends and family, this practice can result in negative metric feedback when done constantly. 

For example, when someone is browsing Reddit forums, your post promoting your newest video may catch their attention. However, they are on Reddit and that is the current activity on their mind. Most of the time, they click the video and lose interest very quickly, only to return to Reddit. This results in negative feedback to the YouTube algorithm, in-turn hurting your channel.

3. Uploading Content With Diverse Topics

In the early stages of a new channel, it’s important to stick to one broad, whether broad or narrow. For one, this tells YouTube what your channel is about. If you have videos about fitness, fishing, and woodworking, there is no clear metadata to determine your channel’s topic and who to recommend your videos to. Second, your audience has preferences and if they subscribed for fitness content, they probably don’t want to watch woodworking videos. By creating videos based around one broad topic, such as fitness, it is much easier to build a loyal audience and grow your channel.

Note: If you want to make videos around different topics, make a second channel for that topic and promote it on your main channel to allow viewers with interest in that topic to make the choice for themselves.

4. Making Low-Demand Content

There is nothing wrong with being an innovator and making unique content. However, our research shows that you should create content that has proven interest and demand before making unique content. You can spend years making content that you want to create, but fail to grow your channel because that content is not what viewers want. Learn what your target audience likes and capitalize on that opportunity by delivering just that.

5. Perfectionism

What stunts the growth of many new creators is focusing on perfectionism. This leads to procrastination, less output, and less creativity. If you’re a new YouTuber, you have a lot to learn. This includes video editing, filming, and finding your on-screen personality, among other factors. We recommend not focusing on perfectionism, but rather focusing on giving it your all every time. With that practice, each new video you make will be better and closer to the so-called “perfection” you seek.

6. The “Me Show” Paradigm

We get it, you created a channel and want to share your life, stories, expertise, and personality with the world. After all, it is your YouTube channel. Many new YouTubers make this mistake because they see successful YouTubers doing it. However, this only works when you have already developed a loyal audience that enjoys your content and most importantly, likes you. If you haven’t provided any value to viewers and immediately jump to focusing on yourself, you haven’t created any reason for viewers to care about or be interested in you.

In the beginning, focus less on you and more on what brings value to your audience.

7. Unclear Video Goals

Many times new creators make videos without having a clear goal in mind. Before making a video, ask yourself, “what is the purpose of this video and how can I create the video around that purpose?” Think about what the video is doing for your channel, and most importantly your audience. 

8. Lack Of Effort On Thumbnails

Thumbnails are the most important factor in whether someone clicks on your video. Some YouTubers spend as much as two hours to create a highly clickable thumbnail. In the beginning, determining what makes a clickable thumbnail for your channel will be a lot of trial and error. If you’re not trying to improve your thumbnails, you’re making a huge mistake. 

9. Upload Inconsistency

When starting out, it’s important to have an upload schedule that is somewhat consistent. It doesn’t have to be perfect either, you can miss a day or two. The issue comes when creators skip weeks or months of uploading a video, especially without informing their viewers of this break. When they finally upload a video again, the results are mediocre in comparison with prior uploads. This is the result of viewers losing interest and a lack of relevance due to not uploading for so long.

We know that life has its ups and downs, which can result in YouTube taking a back seat for a period of time. To combat this, we recommend being ahead of schedule by having a video or two already produced and ready to upload. If for any reason you cannot make a video that week, you will already be ahead of schedule and have time to create another to maintain your upload consistency.

Don’t Make These 9 Common Mistakes As A New YouTuber

There are more common mistakes that new YouTubers make, but these 9 tend to be the most detrimental to the growth of a new channel. Keep these mistakes in mind when starting your channel and creating videos to have the best chance of succeeding on YouTube.

At 306 Media, we help many new creators launch their channels with a strategic game plan to put their channel on the fast path to growth, while avoiding these common mistakes. Learn more about how we can supercharge your channel with our consulting and management services.