How to grow a brand-new YouTube channel (a live audit)

All right, Noah. Thanks for letting me record this. You wanted me to kind of do a bit of an audit of your YouTube channel. You just started channel not long ago and wanted to see well, how can you grow the channel? Yeah? So, let's talk about this. Let's Let me put it on the screen so that we can all look at this together and then folks, if you're watching this and you have any thoughts for Noah, please comment below the video, of course. So, first of all, congrats Noah on starting the channel. First of all, it looks nice. The your your your branding already creates credibility, which is good. You know, just in you know, the all caps it's it's stylistic and and the the logo, etc. Okay. And then just overall your your your your video thumbnails also match your branding. So, I feel like just at a first glance, it's already it's already looking good. You said before we started recording that originally you were intending to reach beginners who are creating and we can see here who want to make electronic music meditation healing without tech overwhelm integrate sound healing modalities da da da. But then you noticed that the people who are actually watching or commenting perhaps are are more advanced and I I think I can see why because just your even your thumbnails suggest something advanced. Like I I'm a musician myself. I'm an amateur musician. I don't do electronic music yet, but I'm looking at this. I'm like this is already advanced as a musician. It's not it's not for beginners at all. And even just like your your keywords for your titles tune Ableton Live, that's not a beginner thing. Spotify retune, I mean I I don't even know what that means, right? Like like I'm a musician. I don't even know what that means. Of course, I'm I'm I like I said, I'm not an electronic musician. So, more like an analog musician. So, So, yeah, maybe this is more this is more of a beginner thing. Um but I feel like if you actually wanted to attract beginners, you need to make your titles and your thumbnails far more beginner-friendly. Um and you could of course work You You mentioned that you have been working with my AI uh on on just talking about business and marketing things. That's great. I encourage everyone, feel free to use my free AI uh trained on my content to to help you with your strategy, etc. But here you you should use an AI that knows you. I don't know if you use ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, but over time as you chat about your business or if you if you use my AI a lot, that's fine. I'm happy for you to use it, but the problem is that it doesn't keep a memory of you. Actually, I think it's one long thread, right? So, maybe it has some memory. But at some point after you use my AI, you may say, "Please summarize. I'm going to be continuing my chat in another AI. So, please summarize everything you know about me that might be useful for another AI to to understand me and continue to to work with me and then whatever. But I think you need to work either with an AI or just you know, think about it yourself. How How can you Oh, one more thing I should show you is that YouTube Studio now has AI. Okay? YouTube Studio now has AI on the top right. On the top right, you can click on Ask Studio. And this is a I don't know if Noah, have you tried this yet? Um >> Not yet. >> Not yet? Oh my gosh. Okay, so go to everyone who has a YouTube channel, please go to YouTube Studio and click on the AI on the top right. And this AI knows all of your channel's statistics, all of your channel's data and metrics, and uh people are commenting about on your channel, and and I think even it even knows what people who watch your videos also watch. So, here you can say, "Hey, I'm trying to reach" You could ask anything regarding your channel. "I'm trying to reach beginners. First that you know, first study my channel and you know, um I'm trying to reach beginners. I feel like I'm reaching more advanced people. What are some topics that that that I could" But yeah, so to work with maybe that's the most efficient way of going about it, especially with YouTube. Work with this YouTube Studio AI that knows your channel data already and knows the YouTube metrics. I mean, it knows YouTube to to work with titles and thumbnails, topics essentially for what you should make. Because basically, when it comes to succeeding on YouTube, by the way, I I should say, these days I I'm in a very blessed place where I don't have to grow my business at all. I don't even have to make any money at all anymore. So, I don't I have no care about growing my YouTube channel My YouTube channel at this point is pretty much dead, and I don't care. I have not been trying at all with YouTube thumbnails or titles. But, if I were trying to grow, which I know Noah you are, and and what everyone else who is trying, I would be using the YouTube AI, and also I would be doing um I would be using YouTube AI to brainstorm topics and titles and thumbnails, and also to analyze my current videos. Uh analyze all my videos to say, "What trend do you notice on my channel that I should keep on amplifying? What should I keep on doing based on what's working?" Okay, that's one prompt, and then see what it says. And then ask another prompt, "Study my channel data. What should I probably stop doing because it's not getting traction. Okay, these are all separate prompts you should put in. You know, don't give it too many prompts in one one one go. Do don't don't ask it more than one question in one go um because the YouTube AI is free and it's it only gives you short answers. So, give it short, you know, one question. Anyway, So, so growing on YouTube is essentially about understanding what the target viewer you have wants and delivering it to them. Like I said, for me these days I I just upload videos because I want to and I think it might be helpful for a few of my clients. I don't do it to grow the YouTube channel. But if you if I were growing, I would definitely be saying I'm making the Before I make a video, first get clear about the target audience and what they are watching on YouTube and so therefore likely to watch for my YouTube channel, right? So, that's number one. Number two is Noah, have you studied other YouTube channels that have your audience? >> Um the thing with my audience, when we say from kind of the audience that I had in the past, um because I um I got these clients through more referral on my Instagram channel. Um and so I back then I didn't really post about anything technical. Um and so it was more like I just make music and then people come in are like, "Hey, super cool music." And then I I'm like, "Hey, would you like to make your own? I can help you." And they are like, "I've never thought about it. Oh, yeah, let's try." That's cool. They are a little bit like it's the spiritual people, definitely more conscious people that are maybe also sound healers. >> Yes. Yes. >> Um but they are definitely not in the production thing or I cannot really study other production uh channels because they are just not there yet. >> Ah, okay. See, this is interesting. So, essentially you are creating a new niche a little bit. I mean, I I'm what you're saying does sounds I I bet there are already at least dozens if not if not thousands of people doing what you're doing. Um maybe not thousands of people teaching it, but I would guess there are at least dozens of people teaching it in the world. I mean, the world's a big place. YouTube is a big place. So, okay. I heard a couple things that I think um speaks to the your strate- what I think would be a good strategy going forward. And by the way, I hope everyone here watching is learning from this and thinking about how you can apply what I'm saying to your own channel to your own social media growth. Okay. So, Noah, you said you originally got an audience because you put music out there and people enjoyed the music. >> Yeah. >> So, if I were you I would have two separate YouTube channels. One for the music and one that you already have right now which is your teaching about the music about the creation about the production. Because the people who are drawn to your music, many of them are not who they don't want to produce music. They just want to enjoy it. Okay. So, in your music channel, do you have a music channel on YouTube? >> Yeah. >> You do. Oh. >> Yeah. Yeah, finally that one also had one quite viral video. >> Oh, yeah. So, which which what what is it called? >> Um that's just my name, just Noah and then Kempf. >> Okay. I'm I'm going to look it up. Um >> Yeah. >> Okay, cool. And I'm just going to share the screen real quick here. Okay, awesome. Great. Yeah, 90,000 views, right? Um >> Yeah, yeah. That one was >> super nice. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah, I mean you've got you've got Yeah, you've got some. Um Wow, that's cool. That's really Now, here's the interesting thing though. Your your popular videos are all handpan videos, but you're not teaching handpan. >> Mhm. But I could teach the production. >> Okay, I see. >> record >> but but but but why aren't you teaching handpan though? >> Mhm. >> Look at it. It's all handpan. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. That channel was purely handpan. But it was I think my my current niche is really to bridge the worlds because I come from the production side. And then I went into handpan. And now I make kind of electronic music with handpan. So that's >> then the bridge. >> Okay, so So well, I noticed you haven't uploaded in in a year. Okay, so >> Yes. >> I know you as you said you were taking a break and and that's fine. But now you're back and I would encourage you to upload music just that's focused on the electronic stuff. I mean, because that's what you're teaching. So so I would love to see you do that and then hopefully some of those videos will go viral. And then by the way, at the end of each of those videos Well, either at the end if if it if you you know, sometimes when you when you add some words at the end of the video it it might make it go less viral cuz people are less likely to share it if it's just some they're interrupted by by words. But you could make a very soothing you could make a very soothing and almost part of the musical uh you know, rhythm. Um but the words would would say, "If those of you who are interested in learning how to produce this kind of music I I have another channel that teaches you. look at the link below kind of thing. And of course, in the description below you would also be very clear to say, learn how to do this yourself because that's one of the things that when you know, whenever we watch someone on YouTube, we're like, oh, that's so cool. A lot of people some people go, well, how do I do that? And then the description and anyway, so this is really cool that you already have this. Keep going. Um, produce the music. And then take people from the music over to the production for those who are interested only. You don't want to You don't want to contaminate um, your production channel with music that might go viral because then it confuses the YouTube algorithm. >> Yeah. >> That's one of the mistakes I made uh, for years um, that I I don't want to say I regret cuz I'm I'm happy about how my career went. But it went, but uh, but I I really really confused YouTube um, with all kinds of topics and all kinds of different audiences and that was that was not good for YouTube growth. And that's why my YouTube channel is dead at this point because YouTube is like, I don't I don't know who you are. I don't know what you're trying to do. I So So I'm really glad that you have the two separate channels. Okay. The other thing is do you do collabs? >> Not yet. Not actively. Yeah. >> So So >> So there's there's only there's only there is three three ways to grow any social media, right? Organically which is like I've already talked about it. The more you can understand the audience, what they are watching or listening or reading and then come along into that river, you know, go into you know, dip into that river of existing interest and trends the more likely you're going to find traction. So that's organic. The second way is collabs, collaborations, collaborations. The third way is paid advertising. Okay, so basically three ways, right? Uh, Organic you you know that we talked about. Paid collabo- or not paid. Well, could be paid collabs, but usually free collaborations. Um you mentioned you you have a spiritual audience you're trying to reach who are interested in producing music. So it sounds to me like if you could collaborate with sound healers who have an audience. That would be great because they might do the sound healing, but they're not interested in teaching people how to do it. So you would come into their audience and and do some basic teaching so people go people like you teach some quick wins where people go, "Oh my gosh, I could do this just with my computer even?" Or I could do this with you know, a basic keyboard or whatever whatever it is. I mean, if you're doing a collaboration, you should you should do it with with a with a more general audience. They don't have equipment in mind. But you could also collaborate with people who have basic equipment. I don't know what that might be, but it could be other electronic music uh chan- a electronic music enthusiast channels. And then you would collaborate with them to bring a spiritual vibe to say, "What does it mean to do sound healing with electronic music? What does it What does 432 mean or why is it important?" You know, that kind of thing. >> Yeah, mhm. >> So what do you think? >> Yeah, I think that makes sense. Also, there are a lot of spiritual musicians. >> Yeah, there we go. Yes. >> jump in. Yeah. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> Right. And and collaboration means that you could swap maybe because you could do something for their channel and then they could maybe do some music for your music channel. >> Mhm. >> Cuz your music channel has good you know, good credibility. It's got you know, it's about a thousand subscribers and it's got some viral videos. So I think you I think you could swap that, you know. Yeah. So. >> Yeah. So, you would focus more on kind of growing with my music and then having the coaching channel a little bit more to give it the structure and make people Yeah, okay, that could fit. Okay. >> Yeah. Now, the other the final thing I should mention and this is part of organic, you know, maybe maybe one B is cross-platform promotion. So, if you're going to produce you're going through the trouble of creating a video, you might as well put the video in multiple platforms to see which one actually gets you the most traction. It takes you an extra 3 minutes. >> Yeah. >> So, and these days AI can do it for you. I now have Oh my gosh, I I've had this revelat- not well, this great up- upgrade up-leveling in AI in the past month where AI now posts my content. I have Claude code Claude desktop app basically like post everything for me. So, it's like when I want to be purpose, it's like Claude, go ahead. And then it just posts posts it in all these different places. So, do it yourself takes 3 to 5 minutes. You do it with AI, you know, you got to train it, whatever, but but um I think you should post I I mean, I would I would duplicate the same strategy on Instagram, maybe Tik Tok. Um I don't know, maybe Substack too, actually. Um cuz it would be unique certainly on Substack. Um it would be two two channels on each platform. The music one or maybe start with the music one because that's more likely to go viral. So, so go viral on the music the music videos on these various platforms and then mention at the end and in the description that you have a production channel as well. >> Yeah. >> Anyway, is this helpful? Yes. Okay. >> you very much. >> Yeah, you're welcome. I look forward to hearing how it goes. >> Yeah. Thanks so much. >> Thanks.