Content creators, you're wasting your time

I've worked with hundreds of Brands and creators and everyone has this one thing in common everyone's wasting their time you're wasting your time doing things that aren't going to get you results but that ends today because I'm going to break down the most common things that you're wasting your time on and make sure that after this video you stop wasting your time on these things by the way this video is sponsored by HubSpot more on them later okay let's start with the Big E you are wasting your time focusing on the wrong metrics now let

me ask you something if I were to ask you how your social channels performing How likely are you to answer by telling me how many followers or subscribers you have it's okay we all do it I still do it to this day even though I know that this is the wrong metric to be focusing on it's fine you've probably heard someone say to you before that your subscribers and your follow account are all vanity metrics but really what does that actually mean what it means is that your audience size is no longer a correlation of

how well your social channels are performing gone are the days where your audience size is the key way of measuring your channels this is no longer the case nowadays other metrics such as the views that your content gets and the engagement that your content gets are far more important I actually filmed a whole video last year which was all about how your subscribers don't matter it's up here it caused like a little bit of a stir as much of a stir that could be caused when talking about like social media feel a little bit of

a stir because some people were like yeah Rich coming from you like coming from the Creator who has a few hundred thousand subscribers like of course you're saying subscribers don't matter and look I hear you so let me use myself as an example here at the time of filming I currently have around 250,000 subscribers right right if we add the view count of my last 10 videos divided by 10 to get an average you'll see that my average amount of views that my videos have received is around 30,000 now my view count has literally fluctuated

from 2,000 views to 180,000 views just counting the last 10 videos that I've uploaded to this channel right there are other creators in different niches for example vloggers who have significantly fewer subscribers than me they have around 100,000 subscribers but their videos will receive 40 to 50,000 views every single time their views are consistent because always the same format and their views are higher than mine because their audience on average are more engaged than mine are which channel is more valuable is it mine because I've got more subscribers or is it theirs because they get

more views it's theirs theirs is more valuable than mine they probably earn more from their brand sponsorships than I do if they were to release a product or service it might perform better than my products or services do because the important metric here is your views and your engagement not necessarily your audience size I obviously talk about this in a lot more detail in this video so go and watch this if you're still not convinced but the point I'm trying to make today is if you are focusing on your subscriber or your follow account as

the main metric for the health of your Social presence you're doing yourself a disservice focus on your views focus on your engagement because that is what creates a healthy social media presence the next thing that you're probably wasting your time on are your social media channels hear me out you are probably spending too much time managing your social channels and the reason why I know this is because so few creators do not utilize automations to make their social media management a lot more seamless and take a lot less time now if this sounds like you

then don't worry because I have a free resource which is going to help you tackle this problem the resource is called Master social media automation with AI and it's provided to you for free by HubSpot inside the resource you'll get a step-by-step checklist which will help you save time with your social media management boost your engagement and grow your audience effortlessly the guide is packed with tools tips and insights designed for marketers entrepreneurs and content creators who want to scale their social media presence and they want to do this by working smarter and not harder

so let's break this down a little bit further in order for us to be managing our social channels in the most efficient way possible we want to be setting up automations to make creating and posting our content seamless and we can do this using AI so some of the ways that the guide will help you is by sharing time-saving Solutions such as automating repetitive tasks without losing your authenticity very important it will also teach you some proven strategies such as balancing personalization with automation for really impactful connections with your audience and it will provide you

with some smart insights which basically means it will teach you how to leverage AI to identify Trends track metrics and refine your entire approach to content creation of course it also covers things like content scheduling and advanced analytics it's basically going to help you simplify social media Automation and utilize AI to do so this way you can spend more time building meaningful connections with your audience which is what's super important so if you want to stop wasting time on managing your social media channels I highly recommend this free guide head to the link in my

description to grab this free guide provided to you by hopspot for this next thing I'm going to virtually Hold Your Hand whilst I tell you this you are wasting your time obsessing over what others are doing we've all heard the saying right comparison is a thief of joy we all know that we also know that we should be staying in our lane focusing on ourselves avoiding comparing ourselves with others like we all know this stuff and we've all heard it before so why is it so hard to stop oursel from feeling triggered by other creators

doing different things online why is it that when you open up your Instagram and scroll for your home feed you still find yourself falling into the Trap of comparing yourself to others this act is completely wasting your time in extreme cases I mean extreme is probably too big of a word in in serious cases which still feels a bit dramatic but in some cases comparing ourselves in this way can actually lead to us not creating at all we can start to find other people's content such a trigger that it makes us want to stay in

our shell and not share any content online so what are some practical tips that help us avoid this happening the first is to notice when you're feeling sensitive to other people's content for me it actually aligns with my cycle like there are actually certain times of the month where you're not going to find me sitting just browsing my explore feed or the for you feed or the browse features on YouTube whatever it may be you're not going to see me in those areas because I'm feeling particularly sensitive and maybe triggered for you it might just

be that you open up Instagram one day and you immediately notice that you're comparing yourself to others when that happens get off your home feed maybe even get off social media something that really helps me and I know not everyone can do this but I have a personal account specifically on Instagram and that really helps me because it means that I can still go on Instagram and browse in my own personal time but there's no risk of me being triggered by other people's professional content content because the algorithm doesn't show me their content on that

channel right cuz it's all tailored to what I engage with outside of work so that might be something that works for you another practical tip is to pick who you follow And subscribe to carefully if you know that you're being triggered by someone else's content on a regular basis just unfollow them just unfollow them just unsubscribe you have some elements of control over the content that you are seeing use it now if you're one of the people I mentioned before where sometimes comparison can get you in such a box that it actually stops you from

creating I want you to look at your list of content ideas and add an element to it now if you don't have a list of content ideas already start one start creating a list of content ideas that you can add to on the go and when you write down your ideas I want you to write down why the idea will work for you this will help you when you sit down to film at a future day and you start to feel the impact of comparison creeping in and it's threatening to ruin your content creation session

this way you can look at your notes and it will remind you why the idea will work for you forget about what everyone else is doing this content idea is on your list because it works for you and you only it's just a small tip to utilize that might help you at a later dat okay another thing that you're potentially wasting your time on is obsessing over your care I'm talking about your camera your mics your lights blah blah blah you are spending too much time worrying about your care I can say that with almost

complete certainty let me just break down the basic level of equipment that you need so that if you're in this position where you're worrying about what you need you can just hear this list and probably know that you already have this stuff and just keep it moving and focus on the content itself you need a camera of course how else are we filming videos you do not need a fancy camera you can start with your phone and if you do start with your phone start with the rear cameras the rear cameras are more high quality

than your front camera so use the rear cameras right but you can just start with your phone my first 6 months I always forget how long it was it was a while on YouTube I feel only using my phone as my camera the next thing is your audio so this is your mic depending on whether you film at home or away you just need a lapel wireless mic and you can just get a cheap one from Amazon and that will do for the first year of your journey right you can start to upgrade to different

mics over time for example right now I'm using a mic by Elgato I have two Elgato mics I also have a road mic I also have the portable DJI mics like I've got loads of mics right now but I didn't start with loads of mics cuz I didn't need loads of mics to start when it comes to your lighting you either need natural light which is super exciting because that's free or you need one artificial light don't worry about your three-point lighting setup just yet you're just getting started just use one light put it behind

your camera put it high up tilt it towards you and you're done it could be a ring light it could be a softbox light whatever you choose as always I have a link to all of the different kit that I use below if you just want to copy mine cuz that's another thing that you might be wasting your time on like if you're ready to invest in a better camera you're probably spending hours researching different cameras and whilst it's good to know what you're spending your money on sometimes it's worth just looking at the Creator

who has a similar setup to the one that you want looking in their description and just buying the camera they have that's literally what I did this camera I have because of I think it was Ali Abdul it's Ali Abdul I like his setup he spoke about this camera once and I was like great bought it saved me hours and hours of my time last but not least you are potentially wasting your time trying to do too much trying to apply too many tactics and you're ending up chasing your tail I have to be careful

with this one because I know I'm partly to blame for this right there are a lot of tactics that are shared online at the moment and that is great because knowledge is power however sometimes we can end up in a bit of a sticky situation where we are trying to apply every single piece of information that we have learned online every tactic we've ever come across we are trying to apply all at once right this is setting yourself up for failure because not only are you likely to burn out but it also makes it difficult

for you to actually analyze which tactic is working this often happens when you consume all of your educational content for free whilst it's amazing that it's free you have to keep in mind that as a payoff for it being free in addition to sometimes having to watch ads you also now have the responsibility of figuring out which piece of information you are going to apply and when because none of this free content is in chronological order right none of it is crafted specifically for you and your goals it's designed for the masses so now it's

up to you to pick which tactics you're going to apply and when if you do not want that responsibility I do have a membership called the collective and inside the membership I've recently launched a few six-month programs these are basically programs which allow you to reach a specific goal such as increasing your income growing your Instagram audience or growing your YouTube audience and it breaks down exactly how you're going to do that month by month by sharing master classes courses lessons and resources so it takes all of the guess work out for you and you

can just follow that curriculum so so I'll link to those Below in case you're interested for now what I want you to do is to pick one tactic let's say for example you're trying to grow on YouTube and you heard somewhere that it's really really powerful for you to respond to every comment that you have focus on that one tactic for 1 to 3 months and once you've gotten pass that threshold you can move on to test a different tactic this gives you time to actually fully try that tactic and practice it and also review

the analytics to see if it's working you can then decide like oh this is working I'm going to continue or you can be like it's not working let's move on to a one right okay we've solved the problem of wasting time as a Creator all in one video what a what a successful day I really hope you found this useful do not forget to grab your free guide by HubSpot remember it's going to help you master your social media automation using AI it's completely free and it's available via the link in my description if you

like hangging around I recommend watching this video it's all about my Instagram strategy for 2025 please watch it because it helps to keep me accountable thank you so much for watching as always I can't wait to see you in my next video