How to Start with YouTube: Beginner's Guide 🙌

How to Start with YouTube: Beginner's Guide

[00:00:00] Jen McFarland: The Women Conquer Business show is an educational, how to, women in business podcast that features stories, marketing news and real-life experiences from fun and friendly hosts, Jen McFarland and Shelley Carney. Join us as we dive into the details so you can slay marketing overwhelm, streamline processes, and amplify your impact.

You'll learn strategies and tactics, leadership skills, and practical advice from successful women entrepreneurs to help you grow, nurture, and sustain your business.

Hello. Welcome to Women Conquer Business. I am Jen McFarland joined by my lovely cohost Shelley Carney. Today, we are going to talk about how to start with YouTube. It's a beginner's guide because YouTube is the second largest search engine also owned by Google by the way. And it's actually the most popular social media channel, even though a lot of people don't think of it as social media, at least when I poll people and talk to people.

So we're going to teach you how to set up your channel, the basics for how to use YouTube to grow your business. And of course, how to get started with live streaming. So Shelley, how are you doing?

[00:01:17] Shelley Carney: I'm doing super. I'm here in sunny Arizona, where there's a heat advisory for the next few days. Stay indoors, drink lots of water, get air conditioning.

I grew up with this, so it's nothing new.

[00:01:31] Jen McFarland: Later on this afternoon, here in Portland, it's going to start pouring down rain and it'll stop on Sunday, allegedly. But I'm getting really tired of Junuary, which is what my husband and I are calling it. So what else is going on?

[00:01:43] Shelley Carney: The News and Views show is doing well. What we ended up doing, since we're talking about YouTube today, we had a YouTube channel that originally was called uh, A Gypsy's Kiss where we talked about treasure hunting and we grew it to almost 7,000 subscribers.

And then the treasure was found and then everything dropped off and we had to pivot and we were trying to decide what to talk about next. So we came up with Messages and Methods where we were talking about live streaming, content creation, YouTube, all of those things. And then we decided, we needed more interaction and more trendy things to talk about.

So we started a show called News and Views. First it was Headlines and Conversations. This is how you grow a channel. We have to start, you do what you gotta do. Headlines and Conversations turned into News and Views. Then we went from Saturday nights to Saturday and Wednesday nights and people who had followed us before started showing up. The new thing is that they're not just talking about the treasure hunt from two years ago anymore. They're also talking about whatever we're talking about. So if we're talking about the news, gun violence or that sort of thing, they'll give their opinion on it.

If we're talking about, the coronavirus update, they'll give their opinion. They continue to follow what we're talking about. This is the first time that's worked, that they have an interest in something outside of the treasure. So that's awesome. We had another channel called Videotero and it's monetized, but we never know what to do with it.

We've done different things with it over the years. So we took Messages and Methods, moved that over to Videotero and changed that channel over. Okay. So now we have two monetized channels that we work on every week. That way, the content isn't fighting against each other, because when you do that, your audience tends to leave because they don't get you.

They don't like everything on your channel, so they just leave. So that's what we've been working towards and it's going pretty well. We're getting a lot more attraction with trending topics because people join us and they want to share their opinion and they stay longer and watch time is a big thing for YouTube.

So keep that in mind as we're talking today.

[00:03:57] Jen McFarland: So cool. Yeah. It's funny, I've been thinking a lot about YouTube and then also thinking a lot about where you send people after a show or what happens next, that next step. It came up in a talk recently about marketing your small business.

I teach these classes all around Portland in Oregon. It was an e-commerce panel. And somebody else on the panel said, when you start, you should really talk to a branding person. It went through all of that, and I said, can I give like another side of this?

I didn't want to say devil's advocate 'cause it's used all the time. I think that's a valid way of doing it and then I think there's another valid way of doing it. I said, the other way that you can go about your business is you work on providing really good services and you have a website and maybe it's not really everything that you want it to be, or everything that you say, but you work on getting to know people and getting the word out and doing all of that.

Then when you're really ready do the branding thing and really start working on it. I feel like everybody else on this panel, when they met me, here I am this marketing person with a terrible website. I'm teaching everybody how to design websites and I'm doing it for people and my own is like the cobbler's kids have no shoes. That was fine because I was still getting clients and everything like that. Things have shifted now over the last year, as I really got my voice and my branding really into my own stuff. Now I'm in a different phase of my business and I have a new platform.

Things are very clear. The messaging is very clear and I'm starting to get people I don't know, coming in through the funnel in a different way. That's another way of doing all of this. All of which is a long way of saying, when you start your YouTube channel, you want to make sure you have a link back to your website.

You want to align the brand as much as you can. It's really about having a place for people to go as the call to action and the branding will catch up. One of the brilliant things about having a YouTube channel and having a podcast or anything is it's practice. When I first started doing all of this stuff, it was so that I could talk about the things I knew about and practice saying these things over and over again. So that when I went to speaking engagements or when I went to help a client, I sounded consistent I had practiced it in some way or another. Even though it was a super public way of practicing, it really helped me get over some of my fears and some of the different things that you can do.

Whatever your journey is it's really important to think holistically and look at all the different elements of how it can help you. It's just what's been on my mind about all of this.

I've been thinking a lot about YouTube. My journey with it. I will admit that, I've sent podcast audio to YouTube before. It's always been that thing that I played with and then we got more serious about it starting in January when we relaunched the show. It's been an interesting journey.

This stuff evolves and changes and it's really fun. So speaking of evolving, even YouTube is getting into the podcasting business. Yes. It's our breaking news. Do we have sound for that? We're still working on that, so don't worry about it, Shelley.

That's cool. I can't figure out how to do it either over here. Okay.

[00:07:10] Shelley Carney: I kinda do, but I tried it last night and then I ended up with some echo and it was not a pretty sight. Or a pretty sound.

[00:07:18] Jen McFarland: So we don't have sound effects. Sorry, everybody you'll have to just be okay.

[00:07:23] Shelley Carney: Duh duh duh dut dut. Breaking News.

[00:07:28] Jen McFarland: So there are some signs that YouTube is getting into the podcasting business. If you have been a podcaster for a long time, you're like I can already send audio there. This is a little bit different because there are some signs that YouTube will allow you to connect your RSS feed so that it can just pipe in to YouTube automatically.

That sounds like a nice thing. I had done it before with repurpose.io. As soon as the podcast went live, it automatically generated an audio video, which is just like the cover of the episode with the audio under it. So it was still technically a video. That's what it was.

This is different because it would be tracked in your stats, as people listening to it on YouTube. The statistics are all over the place about whether or not that's valuable, whether or not people do it. I wonder as we are live, people can listen to this if they want to.

I think a lot of people do, you might have a tab open on your browser right now. We know that people are watching because we can see it. So you bebop in and out. Later in the future, if you get an email from one of us talking about this episode, you can do the same thing and just listen to it.

So it's an interesting thing. What's your take on YouTube getting into podcasting?

[00:08:41] Shelley Carney: One of the things that YouTube offers is that you can upgrade and you get rid of some of the ads, and it also gives you the ability to turn off your phone, but still play the audio. So you can use YouTube as a podcast player, if you give them money.

So that might be one of their incentives to make that happen for themselves. There are more and more podcasts all the time. So if they were to convince people, Hey, you put your podcast on and then we'll talk people into upgrading, give one month free or whatever. I think it's about money.

[00:09:23] Jen McFarland: Yeah. I agree. It's about money. It's interesting for podcasters. I think if you had a monetized channel and there was some need for it, you were talking to people, you could do it. I would be curious to know if people like Ali Abdol and people who have millions of followers on YouTube and also have a podcast if they have any interest in this, or if this is really for smaller creators. I haven't been able to get a lot of information on it because there's just signals out there that YouTube is doing it.

It hasn't been like a lot of big announcements about it, as far as I can tell.

[00:09:55] Shelley Carney: If they're just following along, it's not going to be much. But if they're doing something innovative, that everybody goes, oh, that's really different. I really needed that. I didn't even know that could exist.

Then people will get excited about it. But if it's just, oh, Spotify already does that, then nobody's going to

[00:10:12] Jen McFarland: Nobody's going to do it. Yeah.

My second piece of breaking news, and if you've been listening to me or following me for awhile, you're going to be like, Jen, why you got to keep hating on Clubhouse? For reals.

[00:10:24] Shelley Carney: I think we should follow the evolution of products like that, yeah. It did better than Quibi, we'll say that.

[00:10:31] Jen McFarland: So now Clubhouse is laying people off. They're saying that they're changing their strategy. I think that if you look at Clubhouse and Spaces and all of these, there were all these competitors who popped up, Wisdom, Shelley mentioned before we went on live. All these platforms popped up and said, oh, okay. Yeah, we're going to get into the audio only space. Whether it was a part of Twitter or a part of LinkedIn or Wisdom, which was another standalone platform, you might even look at Fireside as another one that you can talk and it's free audio content. What they're finding, not just with Clubhouse, so it's not just hating on it, although they're the ones laying a bunch of people off, is that now that the pandemic is over, people don't have time to just sit around and listen to people with unstructured content talking. I was sharing with Shelley, the reason I've never been super hot on Clubhouse is because ,aside from Social Media Examiner, Social Media Today, people who just talk about social media platforms and users, there really hasn't been a lot of marketers saying this is the place to be. It was not really ever like that. And it's because you can't monetize it. You have to be there and sitting there.

The engagement's different. I had concerns when I went on there and I was like people just want me to consult for free. I can't do that. I don't have time to sit here all day and consult for free. So I had personal, like from a service provider and someone who guides people in providing services, issues with Clubhouse.

I also thought it might not be a good platform in the long run. What I like Clubhouse for when I'm on there is actually listening to music and discovering new artists. Then I go donate or buy their downloads and listen to it later. Anyway. So Clubhouse is laying people off.

We're also seeing contraction in the audio only space. A few weeks ago I talked about Heartbeat as a community platform akin to Circle. Here's where you see the contrast. They actually have audio only water coolers, where you can hop on audio only with somebody else in the community.

I think that's great. So you're in a community with other people, you just want to work through something really quick. That's what those audio only spaces are for. You don't have to call somebody. You don't have to exchange any information that you don't want to, you can hop on, have an audio conversation and hop off. Spaces like Clubhouse is just so time-consuming and I think we're going to continue to see contraction in that area. If you're using it and it's working for you, go for it. But if you're not really getting a lot out of it, just know that fewer and fewer and fewer people are actually on there.

[00:13:06] Shelley Carney: My brother was talking about, he works for a corporation where instead of doing everything with email or just calling a person, they've gone to Teams, which is like a Slack type of a thing. Microsoft Teams. Once you find something that really clicks for you, then you dig in deep. Not that many people really dug in deep to audio only like Clubhouse and those types of places.

They tried to make it into some kind of a top of funnel thing or just grow a community through it. People don't have time for that.

[00:13:43] Jen McFarland: My friend and colleague Julie Fry, she does a top of funnel that's audio only. But she's catering to podcasters and she created a basic, private series podcast as the top of funnel to bring people in, go through some basic lessons. Then, if you want to have somebody who's booking you on podcasts, then, I think that's how it's done. If you want to do something audio only as a top of funnel, make it something that's within your environment, a space that you own and that you are structuring it. So you're always putting your best foot forward.

The unstructured piece is really hard for some people and for a top of funnel, it really is about bringing people in and then they decide if they want to engage with you further. And then they work their way, through the funnels. That's the issue with something like Clubhouse as a top of funnel, you have to put some real limits around it.

I think a lot of people, unfortunately, haven't done that. They'll go on there for a long time to have a show and they provide way too much. All of which is to say, Clubhouse is different than YouTube.

[00:14:49] Shelley Carney: It is.

[00:14:50] Jen McFarland: Let's start getting into talking about YouTube. The first bullet point we have is like, why YouTube?

Why would you even start with YouTube? I alluded to it in the quick intro. It's the second largest search engine. It's also owned by Google. So what that means is Google is more likely to serve it up as a result, because, Hey, it's another product that they own.

[00:15:14] Shelley Carney: That's right.

[00:15:14] Jen McFarland: This is why, if you have a podcast, you put it on Google podcasts. If you have videos, you put them on YouTube. You use terms that it's likely that people are going to use in search for how you describe whatever you're creating. That's going to be on Google, whether it's your website or other places. A lot of people really just go to YouTube as a search engine now. Everybody wants to see things. They want to know how things work. There's an explosion, and it started before the pandemic, and then it's just continued to explode. Unlike some of the statistics around marketing, people searching for videos on how to do something has really not waned.

And they don't think it's going to. I think a lot of people were like, whoa, I can learn a lot of stuff, and this is how this works. So all of that is on YouTube.

The second piece is really interesting because the Pew Research Center has done basically a longitudinal study of social media.

It's what I talk to people about all the time in my presentations. If you really want to figure out which of your customers are where, you use that to go out and look at all the demographic information about every social media platform. So it's really good stuff.

The most popular social media channel is YouTube and then Facebook and things like that. But when you ask people and I've done this, 'cause I've talked to people, I had a poll on LinkedIn, different things like that. A lot of people don't think of YouTube as social media. And I'm like, why? You're posting content, you're writing about it. People can comment and share it.

What part of YouTube isn't social media? So it's really important to remember the value and it's really a two-prong value. Google and Facebook don't really like each other. So if you post something on Facebook, that's like its own ecosystem. You post it on YouTube, it's going to show up in Google search. Google has relented a little. So now Instagram videos might be searchable. TikTok videos might be searchable. They haven't really let up when it comes to Facebook. So if you want to share on a platform in LinkedIn articles, you might get some traction if you post them there.

But if you really want to get some traction in your content, then you have to be on YouTube at least a little bit. When a business is just starting out, the advice is you set up platforms everywhere. You set up a brand account on YouTube so that you can put a description of your business, a link to your website, all of this stuff, because they're giving that space to you for free.

So you claim it and then if you ever want to use it, then it's there for you and waiting. But it's also, so you show up in listings, right? You have your business name, you have a link to your website. Maybe you have a link to your favorite social media platforms that you actually do use, a little bit of branding, and you just started off.

So I believe as someone who's toyed with YouTube, again, for years, there are a lot of really compelling reasons to use YouTube as one of the channels that you look at seriously. Especially if you are a content creator. Do you have anything to add to that?

[00:18:16] Shelley Carney: I was typing notes. So I agree with everything Jen said,

[00:18:23] Jen McFarland: Gosh, you probably don't, you weren't even listening.

So there's, I can see people are watching. So if you have any questions about YouTube, please be sure to hit us up and let us know in the comments. If it surprises you that YouTube is social media that would be interesting. The third most popular search engine is Pinterest and they show up actually in Google search too.

It's all very interesting, how Google picks and chooses the elements that show up. But so do you want to get us started in the second part about setting up your channel?

[00:18:54] Shelley Carney: Setup your channel. So the first thing you're going to need is a Gmail account, right? You have to sign up for Gmail and then that's hooked into all of the Google products, Google drive, Google calendar, and YouTube.

So then you can get into your YouTube channel and start setting that up with the name that you want it to have. You can put in your art. Put in there what it's about. When you show up. If you do a weekly show, put that on there. Then consider in your channel art, what should be in there? I like to put picture of myself and what I'm all about so that people know if they're in the right place. They may have searched a term, found your video and watched it, but they don't know if that's a one-off or if that's something that you do all the time. You want to put in your branding what you're all about, what people can learn when they come to your channel.

Let me just share mine really quickly so you get an example of what I'm talking about for those of you who are watching.

[00:20:00] Jen McFarland: While Shelley's getting ready to share that, I will add that if you have your Google workspace, that counts as a Google email account, you can use that. If you are using this solely for your business you might consider setting up a brand account.

It's tied to your brand. It's a little hilarious when I comment on other people's shows and it says Women Conquer Business. There are some things to that, but just know that you can make it all branded also with a brand account. And that's another way of doing it.

[00:20:28] Shelley Carney: So you can see with mine, the the banner has my photo, this is me. Then I say, what I'm all about. Grow your business with content marketing. High-level live streaming is the best way to build an online community that buys from you. That's my belief statement, right? Everything hinges on that belief that I teach. And then I talk about from the moment you check into my channel, what I'm about and what I'm doing, and then of course you can see all the playlists and you get to choose, okay what do I want to learn more about? Productivity? Time-saving?

Or maybe they're looking at me, who is she? Or what do I need to know about her? There's some media appearances and interviews. So I have my podcasting interview with friends. They could see who I surround myself with. Content creation, ideas and all of that.

So there's tons of content on here about what's at the top. I don't want to say I am this and then have a bunch of meditation videos. I have those, but I hide them. They're not on the front page.

[00:21:30] Jen McFarland: And that's an interesting thing, right? So I was just looking I'm like, what do I have at the top of the Women Conquer Business channel?

So I just checked it 'cause I always look at it, but I'm almost immune to it at this point. I've seen it so much. For me, it's the tagline of Untie the Knots and Find Joy in Marketing Your Business. I think it's because I'm happy and I giggle a lot and I love talking about marketing.

So that's what comes through, it's like a different way, a different approach. And that was one of the iterations of my tagline, and I think now it's adjusted somewhat. But you brought up a good point and want to talk about that here, which is, you say that you set up playlists and you have other things that are hidden and I think that's really important to talk about for just a second.

[00:22:11] Shelley Carney: Okay.

So your playlist are keywords, right? They are things that people are going to Google. So you want them to find things that represent what you're doing and why you're on YouTube. I'm known for a couple of things.

I did life coaching for several years before I got into content marketing. So people might find me that way. But I put those playlists on you have to go looking for them. You can find them, but you have to go looking for them. But my front door is here's who I am and here's what I do.

Playlists are great for organizing your materials so that people can watch for longer, right? If they get into a playlist and they go, oh, productivity tips, I'm going to watch all of those videos because I want all of that content. That's what you want to do. You want to set it up as binge lists.

Something that is related that people might want to continue watching.

[00:23:05] Jen McFarland: Yeah. When I love this, Kyle, thanks for watching or listening. YouTube is a hundred percent social media. Thank you for that. I think that when I did my poll, you were one of the people who said, yes, it's social media.

So it's very important to look at it that way. I know that some people don't, but yes, it is. So thanks again for the comment. Yeah. So on my show my channel I had in the earlier time of Women Conquer Business, I did a lot of interviews, so I've started breaking things out. So it's here are the interviews with other people.

Here's the livestream. I started a new side project with my friend Bridget Willard. I have a new playlist called 3 0 2 Marketing Redirect. So you want to make sure that you give people places to go so that they have an idea of how to navigate the channel.

[00:23:53] Shelley Carney: And you can share playlists.

They give playlists their own URL. So you could share that with people if you want to direct them to an entire playlist. Absolutely. Which is one of my CTAs today. It's Livecast Life, the playlist, because it's about training about how to set up a live cast lifestyle. Yeah.

[00:24:10] Jen McFarland: Yeah. Okay. So we have the basics.

Maybe you already have a YouTube channel, but we have talk about that first for getting it set up. I have to say as somebody who did this on my own like most Google products, it's not super intuitive. I had to work my way through it. This was a few years ago. It takes a little time. You're going to want to go into that playlist that Shelley just mentioned so that you get your lay of the land on that and figure out how all of that plays out, what that looks like.

So the next phase is if you want to look at YouTube as a path, a stream ha. That's a joke. A stream for how you can grow your business. How do we get into that place? How do we use YouTube to grow our businesses?

[00:24:51] Shelley Carney: All right. Just like Jen always says, you want to look at your SEO and how do you grow your SEO?

You answer questions because that's what people type into Google. They type in questions. How do I, what do, what is that? What is this about? And then what are those questions that people ask that you can answer? Those are your videos.

[00:25:11] Jen McFarland: And you answer those questions again and again, and you talk about it in different ways and you help people in different ways.

And you always have to remember that you know more than your customers, more than the people who are searching. So you need to share all of that stuff and the different dimensions of that. I think it's really easy to forget that when you're helping people all the time, you forget that you're the expert.

I think that happens a lot. So answering customer questions, using your customer's words to answer questions too. So it's not just about answering any old question and using any old word it's about using the words that your customers use. And that fundamentally is what search is for a business owner. There's way more to it that.

Oh, Hey Veronica. Thanks for watching. Yeah. This is, it's so true. I love that answer. Answer questions again and again. Veronica is also in marketing and she knows as well as I do that it's not just one and done whether it's social media, your email list, YouTube, which is like the search engine slash social media.

It's about doing it over and over again. This is a great question. Do you use Answer the Public to find great questions? I do. I love it. The free version, I think now they've limited it down to two. Two searches a day. So if you haven't used Answer the Public, it's a place where you can put in terms and then it just gives you all of the common questions that you can see and then it helps you write pillar posts.

You can also use it to plan out your show. If you want to do a whole YouTube video about answering a particular question. Another thing that you can do is, Google is showing you context clues around the questions. So if you've used all of your Answer the Publics for the day, you can then go to Google, type in a search term, and then they give you some answers in there.

So it's like related questions. They're not giving you as many as Answer the Public, but they're giving you the top questions because Google is trying to guess what it is you actually want to know. What is it that your real questions are? So that's usually in the top third somewhere, maybe below the ads, related questions.

So that'll give you a clue. And then if you scroll all the way to the bottom of your search in Google, you'll see at the bottom related search terms. These are the other words. So what I would say is, and this is true of Answer the Public, this is true of Google, whatever terms you're using to search, to figure out what those customer questions are, if you haven't been in business a long time, or if you're not really sure what those questions could be, look at what Google is giving you as the search results. If it looks super technical, then that might not be what your customers are actually searching for. You want to look at the results that really basic most of the time. What I mean by really basic, for people who aren't a practitioner in your industry. People are not searching for French drains out of the gate. They might be looking for how to un-flood my basement.

French drains are really popular here because when it rains a lot, you can flood your basement. So people are not searching for everything. So you have to be prepared to find those terms that are what your people are searching for. Part of it is you need to ask people, you need to read your testimonials and they'll tell you how you helped people and you use those words and then you just play on Google and find it. Start answering those questions again and again, and understand, as Veronica says here, marketing is a process, not an event. I think that's so true. I don't think I actually said that, but I think that's exactly what Veronica teaches to her group. She's had a group for a really long time, is by marketing being a process, not an event, it means I'm talking about this again and again. Sharing it. Because I know the more times you hear it, the more likely it is for you to understand how exactly I help.

They say that now you need to have I don't even know how many touches before somebody goes from being a prospect to being a client. It's really the answering client questions is really important, especially when you're talking about a platform like YouTube or Pinterest, where it's really both, search engine and social.

[00:29:13] Shelley Carney: Answering that question again, and again is also important because a lot of times people are looking for the newest video on that topic. They're not going to go back three or four years to when you first talked about it. They want something that you've done recently because things change all the time.

[00:29:30] Jen McFarland: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Darn it. I have some good content from three years ago.

[00:29:35] Shelley Carney: Freshen it up and say, Hey, here's something new.

[00:29:38] Jen McFarland: Oh, you're a hundred percent right. And that's like a big strategy. I was in SEMrush for a client working on SEO and they have a whole thing now about can we rewrite your content?

Helping you do that. And they tell you what's not fresh. So it's a hundred percent like you answer it again and again and you're always updating the information and sharing it, and that's part of it too, is Hey, something changed. So let's talk about that.

You have a bullet point here that says testimonials.

[00:30:02] Shelley Carney: You can interview people and when you do that, it makes you both look smart, right? You ask them questions and because you're asking really concise and interesting questions, it makes you look good as an interviewer. And then it, of course, makes the guests look good because they have great answers. Or you can bring on clients and you can talk about what was it like before you took advantage of my services? So what's it like now? And that kind of content gives you that social proof that people who are watching, who are thinking about working with you can say, oh these people say that this person's great. So they must be great. Let me check it out.

It's one of those things that we want to know other people's opinion of a product or a service before we take the risk and try it for ourselves.

[00:30:55] Jen McFarland: Try before you buy. I will say about interviewing people, I know that as somebody who had an interview show for years and now has moved out of that, part of the problem, and you have to always be watching for this, if you are getting started and maybe you're fearful about going out on your own and talking, which I totally get, because that was part of my process too.

One of the things you would just want to be aware of is you still have to remind people what it is that you do. You might be asking great questions, but you could be building your credibility around being a good interviewer. If what you're really trying to do is build a business, then you have to remind people about what it is that you're bringing to the table.

Maybe every once in a while you want to interview somebody that you've helped. So they can also speak to what it is that you do. You want to include little snippets that really help people understand your credibility and your authority. I think it's also really important. What do you think about that, Shelley?

[00:31:52] Shelley: Some of our best guests are those who know us or have researched us and they continue to bring up our words and our content during their interview. Those are the people that everybody wants as a guest. So they get more air time because they are helping the host to promote their show and their work and themselves.

Yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:16] Jen McFarland: Yeah. And the other thing too is when you have people on the show, interviewing people, make sure you have something in there that really encourages people to share that content. I think that's really important.

Oh, okay. So this is a really good question. What do you think is the sweet spot between self promotion and content?

It is a dance. I will say, I do tend to lean more toward content than self promotion for better or worse. I think that's because I'm a teacher at heart, so that's where I go. So I do think that you absolutely have to talk about how you help people, what it is that you do. It's a dance, you have to see how people react. You have to engage people in questions. It's about am I really providing value?

So the videos that I really hate personally on YouTube, if you would like to know.

[00:33:12] Shelley Carney: Ten things I hate about these videos.

Jen McFarland: I don't like it if it's a course. I don't like it if it's a video on YouTube is if the whole thing is really just to get you to buy something. You have to give somebody something. Like give them something actionable that they can do.

We've been talking about how to search, how to build credibility, how to start your channel. All,

[00:33:32] Jen McFarland: you know, that it's a popular search engine. All of these reasons why you should do YouTube. But we've also talked about our own expertise. Shelley has a channel that has got thousands of followers.

She helps people with live streaming. I'm talking about search and how you can do search. So it's a blend, and it's a dance. Sometimes you still have to remind people of what it is that you do. But if you're just leading someone down the path to if you want to learn more, it's not going to work. People aren't going to be interested. It's not interesting to people to just sit through a whole sales pitch. So I don't know if I really answered that question fully because it really depends on the business, but I think you get it. Everybody's smart who watches.

[00:34:12] Shelley Carney: I'm smart. Let me tell you what I think.

I think it's a matter of your focus. If your focus is on yourself, then you're promoting. If your focus is on the audience, the client, the audience's needs, what it is that they're there for, then you are offering that value.

Let me tell you a short story. I worked with a physical trainer for four years and she had real trouble asking people to re-up. Would you like to sign up again? Getting into that conversation, she hated that. So towards the end, I was just like I'm not coming back. And she's oh, why? What happened?

[00:34:49] Shelley: And it was just like, you never really asked me and you never really offered anything. So I'm just done. You have to offer, you have to make that offer. You have to say, I would love for you to work with me and here's what I'm going to bring to you. 'Cause you got to tell them what's in it for them.

If that offer isn't there, they're going to walk away thinking, I don't know why she didn't ask me if I wanted to buy something.

[00:35:15] Jen McFarland: I was starting to lean into that and then I think I got distracted. So Veronica says in terms of self promotion, I was thinking of the suggestion to interview clients about their experiences with us as service providers, because I'm like you and I tend to toward teaching. That's a hundred percent true.

Like I said, Veronica has a really popular group and is constantly engaging with people and asking questions. I think that this is a great idea. This is like the blend, right? Like you are pumping up one of your clients and talking about all of their great work and they are pumping up your work.

Again, it's about where's that focus, like Shelley just said but this is a really common tactic in terms of YouTube and also podcasting, to be honest, I've seen it and it's very successfully done in both.

[00:36:02] Shelley Carney: So basically don't start the show with, so let's talk about how great I am.

You want to talk about their success and what led to their success and how they feel about that and never talk about yourself because they're doing it for you. How awesome is that? And then people who see them on your show are like, oh, I want to do that. How can I be like that person? And then they're going to want to be in your program, too.

[00:36:32] Jen McFarland: But yeah, in answer of your question, interviewing your clients, that's a great thing I think. And it is a good way to position you in terms of credibility and authority about what it is you're talking about. Cause you have somebody there who's oh yeah, I know. You're really great at that.

They're talking about it. It's really helpful. And I think I did that when I appeared on your show Shelley, where I was like, oh yeah, and when we talked about this and I really liked this and it was just a natural thing. So when you're starting out with something like that, you do want to start with, I would say some of your biggest fans, that are going to help you. Because it also helps you in the beginning of crafting that show to get those biggest fans who, if you don't want to do it by yourself, then you need to be with somebody who is saying, oh, they're really great. You want this. It really helps you feel engaged and excited about your own show too. I think

[00:37:22] Shelley Carney: Builds that credibility and authority. That's right. Yeah. Also on our list of tick marks is consistent content. So Jen and I have come together almost every Thursday since January 13th.

There's been times when she's been on vacation or speaking. And we work around that because we've committed to having a show on every Thursday. She did have a physical ailment at one point we had to skip a week, but stuff happens. People are accepting of that, but show up every week when you are physically able.

And that is huge on YouTube because then people subscribe and they get notification and they see your content all the time.

[00:38:06] Jen McFarland: I think that's a Google thing too, right? It's like with your website, just update it. So there's a little tick in your site map. That's super nerd talk. But anytime you update your website, if your website has a site map, it sends the signal out to Google, Bing, all of the places to say, Hey, guess what? Something changed.

And I think it's the same thing with YouTube. Like you have subscribers, so you can get people to hit the subscribe button. They can click a bell to be notified when you have something. But it's also signaling to YouTube that, oh, Hey, something happened, and it helps you show up.

I've noticed that in terms of coming up in search and things like that, the longer we have done this the more we come up in search.

[00:38:51] Shelley Carney: Yeah. And when people get to your channel, they're going to look how often, do they put out content? Oh, here's one from a week ago. Here's one from two weeks ago.

Okay. Must be weekly and they've been sticking with it for quite a while. I can see that. They could see if you are committed to your content.

[00:39:07] Jen McFarland: Yeah. And this is something that it's more on the search engine side, but it is also an element of social media. You don't have to be on social media all the time.

You don't have to post content all the time. You just have to consistently do something. And that's how you bubble up in social media. They're both fundamentally working together in that regard. I follow people and they post one thing on LinkedIn every day. That's it. And they have hundreds of thousands of followers and tons of engagement and all kinds of stuff, because everybody waits for that one thing, because it's very thought provoking.

So it is again, not about quantity. It's about quality. Oh, this is a good question. Do you want to take this one Shelley?

[00:39:48] Shelley Carney: We talked a little bit about this that if you are taking your live stream, like we do, and turning it into a podcast, slides are great, but you've got to make sure that you're reading the slides and you're telling people what they would be seeing on screen and try not to rely too much on them. Toby and I use slides to keep us on track because there's the two of us.

There's certain things we're going to say together. I love slides. But again, it's very visual. So you gotta keep that in mind. If you're on YouTube. It's great. I think talking heads can be a little boring. But when you turn it into a podcast, it's oh yeah, I love this. So you have to know where you're going with it.

[00:40:30] Jen McFarland: I feel a little called out right now. No, I'm just kidding. I think it's also about personal preference. We talked about this before. Toby and Shelley, they are very great at this. They use slides and then they take their presentations and they ultimately make books out of them.

It's like brilliant. I shared that I personally am not ready for slides because this is all still fairly new for me to do weekly YouTubes. And I was afraid that I would rely on the slides too much as a presenter because that's typically how I use slides. So I would say that for us, eventually we are going to move into slides and more, we're really structuring the content more.

Oh, Shelley's oh, that's breaking news. Hey

So I would say that it depends on how you want to structure your content. It depends on your comfort with that. I think it also depends on whether or not your slides are ugly, so you want to have some good branding and some good slides that really are going to help you shine. And.

[00:41:34] Shelley Carney: Toby and I've been having fun lately.

We've been adding our personal Bitmojis to our slides. It is so fun and it's so easy and people are like, yeah, oh look cute little drawings of you guys. And they're doing different things because that's how Bitmoji is design. And it's so fun.

[00:41:51] Jen McFarland: Yeah. Yeah. I use a lot of emojis.

That's on my new website and now I've started putting them in my slides, in my decks when I go speak to groups and stuff. So you can put more personality into it. I think not everybody likes talking heads a hundred percent. Some people do, so it's all about that. It's just, if you are making it into a podcast, you have to make sure whatever it is that you're doing it also translates into people who are only listening because it's not really fair. And that was honestly part of the reason too. The live streaming for the Women Conquer Business show is fairly new. Traditionally it's just been a podcast. So I want to really honor the people who stuck with me through thick and thin on this show since 2018, even through the long break that I took during the pandemic. I want to honor those people and really provide value so that people can listen to it seamlessly.

We are starting to run out of time. Do you want to talk about how to get started with live streaming and I'll shut up? Oh, as much as it's possible for me to shut up.

[00:42:47] Shelley Carney: So if you want to do live streaming, you're going to want a studio set up because you cannot live stream from your phone directly to YouTube, unless you have a thousand subscribers already. Unless you have a third-party app and then it gets a little bit more complicated.

So what we recommend is you enable it on your computer, live streaming enabled. You set up a studio in your home, which is just what Jen and I have done with lighting and audio and a camera. If you want suggested equipment, we'll have that in the description. Go create yourself a show flow or slides, or whatever's going to keep you on track with your topic.

We have a download for that, if you're interested. And then I would suggest trying Streamyard. We love Streamyard. Streamyard is our go-to product for streaming. You can start off for free and you can go just one place when you're doing the free one. So you can try it out, going to YouTube with Streamyard, and it gives you little extras.

Like you can see the crawl across the bottom. You can see our names on the screen. You can see our branding and all of that sort of thing. When you use Streamyard, that's very simple to add on. And then keep in mind that your audience may be throwing some questions in like we had today, and you can use Streamyard to display those questions on screen, to speak to the people in your audience who have shown up because they're extra special VIP people because they showed up live and they're writing to you in the chat and they want to have that conversation.

They're raising their hand. So make sure you call on them and appreciate them for being there. Live streaming can be so much fun and it's a step above social media interaction. It's actual, almost like a Zoom call interaction. So it's not quite the Zoom call, but it's really close.

[00:44:48] Jen McFarland: Yeah, I've enjoyed this whole process.

I will say that we have a couple episodes back where Shelley and Toby, when I was in a yurt on the coast, they went through how to set up a home studio. We'll put that link also in the show notes. I put in the chat how to set up a studio. We also last week talked about how to set up a show flow and I put that link in the chat as well.

And then we'll link to last week's episode for you. If you want to hear us talk about it and Shelley went through exactly how that template works. And then Streamyard. I know there's a lot of things. My little side project we're using Restream. I have to say that now that I've used Streamyard, I prefer Streamyard over Restream.

[00:45:28] Shelley Carney: It's user friendly.

[00:45:29] Jen McFarland: It's easier, if you want to get started with live streaming. The beauty of it is Streamyard means you can stream your to anything. Like right now we are multi streaming to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and we know people are watching, they're in different places. We actually can't see exactly where you're coming from, unless you leave a comment.

Oh and LinkedIn, I forgot to say we're on LinkedIn. We're going everywhere. You don't have to do that. I think I've mentioned before, when I started, I was doing Facebook lives to myself in private. So you can do it however you're comfortable. Right now we just put it on blast.

[00:46:04] Shelley Carney: Toby and I recorded a interview yesterday because he couldn't be there at the time we do our show and Jen and I have done this before, too. You can record it, then set it up as a premiere so that it just automatically plays during the time that you normally show the show. It is super easy.

[00:46:21] Jen McFarland: Yeah, absolutely. We want to just let you know, if you want to make sure that you get updates about the shows and understand what we're talking about next week, you can totally subscribe to the Women Conquer Business newsletter. I call it the marketing missive. There's usually some hot tip in there about how to do things.

I will say that it's becoming a more popular newsletter. I actually got a client based on what I wrote last week. There's something to newsletters. They're definitely not dead. And that's at Women Conquer Business.com/newsletter. There's also Shelley's Livecast Life book and that's at book. Livecast.Life. Or we're gonna put the whole playlist from YouTube in the show notes as well. So you can go through all of this. The Livecast Life book is really great for breaking all of these elements we talked about today into smaller pieces. Anything else about?

[00:47:12] Shelley Carney: No, you did it all.

[00:47:13] Jen McFarland: All of it.

[00:47:14] Shelley Carney: I don't want to do self promotion.

[00:47:18] Jen McFarland: I'll self promote my newsletter. I have no shame. So for the tweaks of the week so let's

[00:47:23] Shelley Carney: I want to share that with you. So chapter timestamps, here's why we want to use chapter time stamps. Do you know what chapter timestamps are?

[00:47:33] Jen McFarland: Me? I do.

[00:47:34] Shelley Carney: Okay.

[00:47:34] Jen McFarland: So at the bottom of your YouTube, you can put like the time and the topic that you talk about.

Yes. It breaks the video into chapters, hover over them. And

[00:47:46] Shelley Carney: Then look what happens. So I Googled myself and it shows three of my latest videos. And then this one, because I broke it down into chapter timestamps has this extra thing. It says 10 key moments in this video. So you can click on that. And look at it, it shows you the timeline and isn't that fun?

[00:48:07] Jen McFarland: I think it's great. And it really tells people whether or not they want to do it. Do I want to watch this? And I bet if I click on any of them, it would go right into that chapter. It would just skip ahead into the video. So yeah, you want to make sure that you share that and because of the SEO part and it's just more user-friendly.

[00:48:25] Shelley Carney: Very easy.

[00:48:27] Jen McFarland: Super easy. So really quick, 'cause we just have a couple minutes left. My tweak of the week, I'm currently in testing mode. So I'm not a hundred percent endorsing this. It's just something interesting that I've been playing around with for awhile. I had another product and that ended up being a disaster.

So I'm giving it another shot, which is using AI to help with building Google and Facebook ads. I don't do ads for people. This would be for my own business. Just testing it out and seeing how it works. If you can, use things like AI and search to really build out ads. The product is called Marko Polo.

That's Marko with a K and it could be a problem. I know there's another product actually called Marco Polo that a lot of parents use for communication. Something I'm using and that's at Marko polo.ai. It's also available right now on AppSumo. So if you're interested in ads potentially you can get that for a lifetime discount just as something.

But again, I don't, I haven't gotten completely in the weeds. It was easy to set up an account. It was easy to get things going. And that's Marko polo.ai. If you're interested in that. Shelley, we've got like a quick, a minute.

[00:49:31] Shelley Carney: A quick inspirational nugget for you people. So let's talk about solving problems early.

When we establish habits for ourselves, we need to understand the outcome we desire by practicing that habit. Good habits don't just give us what we thought we wanted to achieve. They bring more growth than we knew they would. So we might start a good habit of walking every day to help maintain our weight and that good habit brings us more than that one thing. We also reduce stress. We get out in nature. We have time to listen to a podcast or meditate as we walk. There are many unseen benefits when we choose to start a good habit.

In the same way, bad habits bring more destruction than we thought. They have their own baggage. Let's give an example of something that I did this week.

Eating ice cream every day feels good in the moment, but it adds empty calories and weight gain, and it's bad for our overall health. It can also encourage others to eat poorly. These results bring along lower self-esteem and dissatisfaction with our weight and it can lead to giving up walking or other good habits.

So when we start habits, we have to see that we're starting something that's going to keep snowballing. The raging waters and deadly currents of bad habits, ill discipline, chaos, and dysfunction, somewhere they began as no more than just a slight trickle. So it's good to every now and then take a look at, am I starting a new habit?

Is this something that I really want in my life? Or do I need to stop this right now? And if your new habit is watching this show, then I say, it's a good habit. Keep doing that.

[00:51:10] Jen McFarland: Good habit. I also say, if you're going to start on YouTube and you make it into a habit that will snowball for you. If you start something like a newsletter that will snowball for you. It's about consistency.

It's always about consistency. So you get more of what you focus on. So be sure that you focus on the things that you really want.

[00:51:31] Shelley Carney: That's right. We are excited to welcome you back again next week. So please do join us for Women Conquer Business and that's next Thursday. Anything else, Jen?

[00:51:43] Jen McFarland: Nope. Have a good week.

[00:51:47] Shelley Carney: Thank you for joining the Women Conquer Business podcast, hosted by Shelley Carney and Jen McFarland. Please subscribe and leave a comment or question regarding your most challenging content creation or business problem. Then share this podcast with family and friends so they can find the support they need to expand their brand and share their message with the world.

Check the show notes for links to valuable resources and come back again next week.