Learn how to build a powerful personal brand on YouTube with expert tips from Sarina Correa. Discover strategies for growing your audience, creating impactful content, and turning views into trust and conversions.
IE 441: Building Your Brand with Youtube with Sarina Correa
Sarina Correa is a coach to creatives, hand-makers, brick-and-mortars, and those transitioning from craft shows to the online space. She has been coaching for about 7 years after having three highly successful product-based businesses. She shows people how to build businesses online, market them as brands, and the inner workings. You can find her on YouTube.
Why is YouTube such a powerful platform for building a brand?
Anytime that you are trying to build a brand, it is key that you show up. It’s extremely difficult to build a brand without being seen. You need to show up and be your true, authentic self.
In our smaller world, we do business with people. We have person-to-person businesses. People are curious about our lives and what we have to say.
Creatives have a lot to bring to the table that people want to know. We have the answers to solve problems.
YouTube gives us a platform to validate who we are, what we bring to the table, and the different skill sets we have. YouTube gives you the opportunity to be in front of people you would never be able to be in front of. This isn’t a Facebook or Meta world where there are lots of different friends.
YouTube is based on the audience. You want to find the audience and be in front of so many people worldwide. YouTube is on every single smart TV in the world. No other social media is.
When we need to solve problems, need motivation, or an idea, we go to YouTube. Google owns YouTube. It is a living, breathing, visual search engine. It is not a social media platform.
It is key in a business. We need to be in front of a bigger and different audience. It gives authenticity and connection because people can see you. Someone once said YouTube is watched more than Netflix (more than 20%).
YouTube has so much to offer, including an audience to get in front of. It isn’t based on friends of friends. When people are looking for a solution to their problem, they can find it on YouTube.
We are going to see a huge update on YouTube in mid-2025. They are going to be more of a visual screen like Netflix is, and will show you what you want to see.
You will have the ability to create a new series. In the YouTube world, it has nothing to do with the number of subscribers. It has to do with watched hours.
What are the first steps someone should take when starting a YouTube channel for their brand?
Just do something. Put a piece of content up there. Sarina tells her people that she doesn’t want perfect lighting or the perfect camera. You want great sound. Focus on sound.
Caption files are CRT (caption files) are very important on YouTube for being found. You don’t have to build a set, buy thousands of dollars of equipment, or edit video. That is the biggest thing people misunderstand.
You don’t have to edit videos. You don’t have time for that. We have a business to run.
We get hung up on not having all the things when we do have a mind, ideas, and a voice. Turn the camera on and do something.
When you start, you may not have a following. Every time you make content, you get better and better because you know what your audience wants. The idea is to take the current following, wherever they are (email, meta world, or other places), and bring them into the YouTube world.
You will also welcome a whole new group. As your content begins to grow, it is key to go back to old pieces of content and see how much you have grown.
You often cannot do this as a regular business. You only see where you are today and forget where you were yesterday.
It is okay to be scrappy and get it out there. Be authentic. Be real. Put your message across and keep doing it. Every time you do it, you will get better. You will see that the lighting is off and fine-tune it.
You can get by with the equipment you have. We all have phones in our back pockets that will do everything we need to do. Don’t overthink it. Just do something.
Jenny was intimidated for years because she hates video editing and thought she needed better equipment. Then, she realized she could use her phone and do little edits with CapCut. It was super simple. Her first video was a mess, but she got it out there.
It is fun to go back and review those. You can see where your editing gets better and how far you have come. Poking fun of yourself is the best way to get the message across because you are talking to people just like you. They look up to you and see what you are doing.
Whether your audience is bloggers, writers, or creatives, you serve an audience that looks up to you. When you just put the videos out there, it opens up a whole new world.
What types of content work best for brand growth on YouTube?
There is no magic formula. Every content creator has to build their own formula.
There are three different types of content in YouTube world. You have #shorts, which is very much like TikTok and reels. Whatever you are putting on TikTok or Reels, drop it on YouTube also.
Shorts have had some dynamite lit under them with the TikTok ban in January of 2025. A lot of content creators started moving over to YouTube, and shorts began to gain traction.
The demographics are a little different and typically tend to be a lot more men than women, and more of an older audience. This is an opportunity. TikTok is indexed and Google loves it. But Sarina isn’t sure where it is going and doesn’t want to put all of her eggs in one basket.
You have shorts and they are important. One to three shorts per week is ideal. Fifteen to twenty seconds is best. It helps drive people to your channel. You may or may not get a subscriber but they may want more of your content if you are offering content they want to see.
You also have short-form and long-form content. Short form video should be three to eight minutes long. That is usually where you have viral potential. You want quick problem-solving material.
No one has time for a 40-minute video. The short form video is what brings you subscribers. Viral is different for everyone. Sarina had a 16-minute video that was getting 11 minutes of viewing and it was considered a viral video. That was bank money.
Long form videos are made more for your audience and bring watch hours. YouTube puts a lot of weight on long form videos. Eight minutes to twenty-two minutes is ideal. Going over twenty-two minutes is fine, especially when you have a core audience.
This is also ideal for ads because you can have three ad sets. You are able to have a mid-roll ad.
Twenty-two minutes is the length of a sitcom without commercials. There were eight minutes of commercials. The long form content is your money-making content.
You can get your subscribers to watch those. You need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours to monetize your videos. Each of your 1,000 subscribers needs to watch 4 hours of video.
It is key that we fish, hook them, reel them in, and capture them in the 8-22 minute video. Once you have the audience built, going over 22 minutes is brilliant, especially if you can keep people watching.
How often should someone post short and long form videos to build a strong brand presence?
Sarina suggests you have one long form video (8-22 minutes) and 1-2 short form videos per week. You can use cuts from your long form video, parts that solve a problem, pull them out, and post them. You can also film them separately.
Doing more than twice a week can be overkill and you will burn yourself out. If you can produce six pieces of video in a month, however that looks, it should be a really good start.
This is not something you do every day. You are not going to get the traction on them. You will think no one is watching.
YouTube loves content. The more content you produce, the better. But more content is not posting every day, like on Facebook or Instagram. That isn’t what it means. It means you are consistently posting new content.
YouTube will see this. If you post too often, you will burn out quickly.
Video content is not for everyone. Not everyone has the ability to sit in front of a camera with no audience and hope for the best. It does make it easier to create with other people. It does help with the awkwardness in the beginning and builds your confidence.
A lot of it is mindset over content. A lot of Jenny’s clients have told her they are not comfortable in front of video. She is trying to give them suggestions of things they can do to help. For example, get on FaceTime with grandchildren or friends to get comfortable with yourself and talking on video.
Doing a roundtable is a great way to get in front of others so you are not by yourself. You are having a conversation while still producing the content that pulls people in.
It is like a podcast. Many people start with podcasts, doing interviews rather than doing episodes by themselves because it is intimidating to talk to yourself. When you can get a collaborative group together, whether it is one person or six people, everyone gets a copy of it. Everyone can use the content.
You can use Zoom or StreamYard. There are some great AI programs that will make the shorts for you.
There are a lot of things you can do with an hour of group content. You can break it down into 15-20 short form videos. If you answered questions, pull them out. It requires a little editing but just do it! In the creative world, we have the option to do things together. Jenny always suggests collaborating when possible.
What are the key elements of a successful YouTube video?
There are a few things you need when you first start. The audience you serve on YouTube is going to be different from the audience you serve on other social platforms. It will take some time to figure out who your avatar is.
Create the content. There are a lot of things YouTube looks at before they put a video in front of someone. First and foremost, you need to have an amazing thumbnail. It is more important than a title.
YouTube scans the thumbnail to see what kind of emotion it creates. Is it happy, sad, entertaining, educational, etc.? Will it be something people would enjoy? You want to keep the words to a minimum. YouTube doesn’t like a lot of words. They rely on the picture to determine the feel of the video.
You want your hook/title (140 characters). Put some hashtags in it because they help. Description is key. People will put something simple like “How to paint a buffet.” They don’t take it to the next step to better the description.
Monetizing YouTube has nothing to do with ad revenue. It is about having a business and growing the following. You have the chance to capture a person’s information by giving them an opt-in, links, sending them to affiliates, or giving them an eBook.
It would be better to have 20 people watch a video and click the link than have 2,000 people watch the video and never take action to click links. Trying to get over the vanity numbers of social media does not apply in the YouTube world.
YouTube is about making a sale, building a brand, and building a following. Most of us have something to sell. Our audience isn’t going to know what we sell unless we tell them.
We are going to get their attention with an amazing thumbnail, hopefully to include our face. Even if your thumbnail is not on brand, include bright colors.
One amazing way to get thumbnails is to either go outside, or get great lighting, set up a tripod of you making different faces and gestures. Hold it for a few seconds. Get screenshots of those to use as your thumbnail.
Use links to drive them to your products or opt-ins. That is money. Don’t watch the numbers. You will get there eventually.
YouTube is a search engine. Drive the audience to something. We often create videos and try to get views because we want ads on our videos but we need to shift to make sure we are selling the things we offer.
Don’t build your business on rented property. If you build your audience on YouTube subscribers, you never know how the algorithm will change. If you have them on your email list, you will be able to continue to use their name.
Only about 10% of revenue from a YouTube video is ad revenue. The other 90% comes from affiliates, sponsorships, and product sales. Ad revenue is a great bonus but it is not where the money is.
What role do keywords, tags, and descriptions play in ranking videos?
The ranking of a video has to do with the engagement you get from the video. One of Sarina’s biggest video incomes came because multiple people commented on the video about her accent and tried to guess where it was from. It had a lot of engagement.
Engagement drives a video. It is the same on all social platforms. We do things to create comments. Ask a question. Put the question in the comments. Answer every single comment under your videos. Negative comments equal positive results on YouTube. People are opinionated and want to share their words.
Thank them for helping you grow your YouTube channel. The more engagement you have, the more you will be seen in YouTube world.
To get quick results, solve a problem. Find 5 people who do what you desire to do. Look at their comments. What are people asking?
A lot of times, when content creators start to get a lot of followers and traction, those questions never get answered. Go into the comments and make videos that answer questions for. Comments are golden. There are millions of comments and millions of ideas in the comments.
When you are on YouTube, some things catch your eye. What are those people doing? When you start to get traction, you may not need to be as concerned about thumbnails. It is more important to get engagement, comments, ask questions, and create a community or relationship with the viewers.
Sarina is creating a playbook of tips, tricks, ideas, and strategies to help you create YouTube content. Look for this on her website The Social Divas.
