How I Plan on Growing my YouTube Channel in 2023

Oct 26

I’ve been on YouTube since March 2016. Yep — that’s almost six and a half years and I just broke 50,000 subscribers.

And even though I get quite a few comments from people calling me out about teaching YouTube when I can only get 50K subscribers — and I’ve had conference organizers tell me I didn’t have enough “authority” to talk about YouTube on their stages…

…I have to say…I don’t really care. I’m not a YouTuber. My aim is not to build subscriber count. I don't make my money off of subscriber count or views, and yeah while those things are nice, what I really care more about is moving in a way that best serves my business and helps my clients.

But I want to talk about WHY I don’t have more subscribers and how I’m planning to grow as we move into 2023 (HINT: it’s not to get more, but to show up more intentionally).

The biggest reason why I don’t have more followers

One word — time.

My business has grown in so many ways, which now includes hundreds of students inside of Video Strategy Academy, and on top of managing all the clients in our agency, it doesn’t leave me with tons of time to focus on my business.

I know what works, and I stick with it, but I don’t have all the time in the world to dig into my own analytics and see what should be moved around to increase my follower number. I took what I knew and it has worked for me over the last two years, which is why my numbers haven’t dropped. To be clear, they have increased, but just not at a skyrocketing rate.

And I’m okay with that because it allows our agency the time we need to produce our best work, but now as we look ahead into 2023, I know it’s time to grow!

If you want to grow a YouTube channel here’s the real honest truth…

You have to put time into it.

Our clients like Katie are growing 12K subscribers and 440K views in 90 days as she’s worked with our agency — we’re doing monthly deep dives into her analytics and tracking daily impressions on videos, then recommending videos she should create based on the data.

A similar thing happened with a client inside VSA, Lisa, who grew her views and subscriber count past what she thought possible.

We could tell them all day long what they need to do, but it won’t work unless they actually put the time into it to make it work.

What I’m doing to grow

Like I said, my team and I have come to the decision that it’s time to grow. We want to scale so we can help more people, and here’s what I’m doing about it!

Blocking time on my Google calendar

Truthfully, I’m still not sold on how exactly I’m going to be doing this but the idea is to spend an allotted amount of time (either one day per week or one week per month) digging into the numbers and strategizing my content based on what I find.

Which means...if I’m going to start blocking time off my Google calendar, I need to have things taken off my plate. So, we’re going to be bringing on more full-time employees to help us be more productive without the overwhelm!

If you would have told 2019 Trena, who felt like she was barely surviving, that she would be in a spot to have three full-time employees, thinking of hiring more, I would not have believed you!

And it’s all because my “small” channel has over 50K subscribers. This is exactly why I wholeheartedly believe that quality > quantity!

I got help

Just because I build YouTube strategies for a living doesn’t mean I don’t need help of my own from time to time.

I wanted an honest perspective, so I reached out to someone I truly respect in the YouTube education space and asked him if I could hire him as a coach for a few months. Getting some outside help means I’ll have a clearer perspective of what needs to be done — which if you’re too close to your content, can be hard to do!

It wasn’t easy for my Enneagram 3 self to ask for help, but I’m so glad I did!

Pivoting content

DUN DUN DUN!

I know, I’m a little scared just typing it.

But I know that YouTube for business owners is incredibly niched because of the many educators on this platform with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

I harp on niching down a lot, but I think it’s also important to remember that you need to niche down in a way that makes sense for your biz (AKA making you money). And I’ve realized AdSense isn’t going to cut it anymore. So, I’ve decided to take my niche from solely “female business owners on YouTube” to be more business-minded.

After launching my business group coaching program, 10K On Replay, I realized how much I LOVE teaching business strategies to business owners.

I’ll still be sharing about YouTube and ways to make it work, but it’ll tie back to your overall business strategy. Think of it like a more 360 content approach to making YouTube work for your business.

Wanna see how I track analytics?

Is digging into your YouTube analytics your idea of a horror movie? You aren’t alone!

The truth is that while it can feel overwhelming, YouTube Analytics are going to give you all the information you need to grow your channel. If you want a YouTube analytics tutorial for beginners (so you can have less overwhelm and make your channel work for you), then check out this video below!