Video Marketing has gained prominence and fame in recent years. More and more professionals are preferring to leverage creative videos for promoting their businesses. YouTube is one of the most popular and preferred social media platforms when it comes to video marketing. With a total of about 6 billion monthly active users and a projection to reach 3 billion active monthly users by 2025, YouTube is truly a cupcake for earning visibility in the global market.
And then comes the very common question,
“How to start YouTube Channel?”
In this article, we will share tips and recommendations on starting and growing your YouTube channel and earn reasonable views, comments, likes, and subscriptions.
Before jumping on to the points, let us try to understand why do people (consumers or customers) subscribe to a particular YouTube Channel?
The Top reasons for consumers subscribing to YouTube Channels
The majority of the consumers subscribe to YouTube channels to gain knowledge about the domain, technology, or industry they are associated with. They search for educational content in the YouTube Videos. The next set of customers search for content related to their hobbies. Others mainly focus on entertainment and fun videos. With the mentioned considerations and observations, the following sub-sections will elaborate on how to start and grow your YouTube channel with valuable tips and tricks.
You can use Social Blade to see statistics of youtube channels.
The Recommended Ways on How to Start and Grow your YouTube Channel
Let us now start exploring the best and proven ways of growing a YouTube Channel:
Finalize your Niche or Genre
The first and foremost step on how to start and grow your YouTube channel is to finalize the niche or genre to be focused on. You can select 2 to 3 niches for your channel. The topic categories must be decided in such a way that you have enough content for the videos to start with. Besides, you must be confident in creating future videos on the selected niche or genre. Once decided, align your content accordingly. The recommendation is to select topics related to professional careers, hobbies, or entertainment.
Decide the name for your YouTube Channel
It is very crucial to decide on a unique name for your YouTube Channel. Never assign a common name that is competitive and results in multiple searches. With the name being unique, consumers or customers will find it easy to search for your channel. This increases the views on your channel as well as ranks it high in the search results. The name must be catchy and attractive to lure visitors to your channel.
You can use TubeBuddy and vidIQ for optimization and channel management
Decide your audience
As a next step on how to start and grow your YouTube Channel, you need to decide and know your target audience. The audience must be related to the genre and niche of your videos. Next, you must try to analyze the interests and preferences of your audience. Are they interested in educational content or content related to entertainment and fun? You can conduct a survey or a poll in your social media channels to understand the customer mindset. Accordingly churn your ideas for reaching out to the audience, thus resonating with their needs.
Find out the keywords or keyphrases for videos
One of the crucial aspects to remember on how to start and grow your YouTube channel is to find out the appropriate keywords or key phrases for videos. Check keywords in various tools and software available on the internet based on their search volume, Click Through Rates, Impressions, Cost per click, and so on. Use the ones related to your video in the title as well as the description of the videos. Keywords are a powerful mechanism to reach the target audience and boost traffic and views in your YouTube channel.
Select a catchy title
People search for titles that are interesting and engaging. In the search results, they click on videos that have catchy titles. Hence spend some time selecting an appropriate title for your videos. It can start with “How to” or “Tutorial” or “Review” and so on. If you are creating videos for any brand, then ensure to specify the name of the brand in your title. Check whether the title is being used by other competitors. If so, try to tweak the title to keep it unique and different from others. Half the battle is won if you can attract visitors with the video title. Rest you need to work on the content.
Create an attractive Thumbnail
Along with the title, Thumbnail is another interesting concept on YouTube. You can take a snapshot from your video to create a thumbnail. But be mindful that the picture is not blurred. Clarity is an important factor in a thumbnail. You can leverage image creation tools like Canva to create good thumbnails. The fonts must be consistent, clear, and visible. It’s good to have your channel name and the title of the video in the thumbnail.
A visual display is highly probable to draw the attention of the visitors. Besides, it adds an aesthetic appeal and professionalism to your YouTube channel. Thumbnails along with the title of the video are powerful weapons to draw visitors to your channel, thus increasing views, likes, comments, and subscriptions. The more you gain engagement, the more your channel will grow faster.
You can use Easil, to create thumbnails.
Use appropriate Tags
A separate section for tags is provided by YouTube while uploading the videos. Add as many tags as you feel, but ensure those are related to the content of your videos. Tags help YouTube to understand the content summary and how valuable it is to the audience. Even it helps to rank high in the search results as people sometimes try to find out videos based on specific tags.
You can even use # (hashtag) besides the video title or description for better visibility and SEO-friendly content. The suggestion is to tag the brands being referred to in the content. It helps in being an influencer for other potential companies or brands.
You can use Rapidtags.io for tags
Specify the Categories
Just like it is good to mention the tag, you are advised to specify the categories with which your videos are associated. YouTube sorts out the videos based on the categories and circulates among the appropriate audience. Thus, you stand a chance to reach out to potential customers and gain traffic to your channel. The more the traffic, the more are the chances for your YouTube channel to grow. And the more it grows, you will be able to monetize your channel faster.
Create Playlists
Remember to create playlists, another important step on how to start and grow your YouTube channel. Many a time viewers do not prefer going over the videos one by one. Instead, they prefer to check a playlist and play all videos at once. Furthermore, if you have a YouTube channel for multiple genres, then it is good to create a separate playlist for each genre. You can mention the titles of the playlists separately depending on the niche and add the videos to them accordingly.
Work on content with Trending Topics
It is advisable to search for trending topics as per your genre if you are thinking about how to start and grow your YouTube channel. Trending topics appear higher up in Google search results. Pick up such topics and record videos using your innovative and creative mindset. Ensure you introduce interactions and engagements with your audience in the videos. Questions and Answers style is a good way to keep the viewers focused on your content.
It’s good to talk more instead of introducing only music and captions. Ask for feedback and comments from the viewers and assure improvements based on the suggestions and recommendations by them. This will create a goodwill factor within the viewers, a belief that you are showering due respect to your audience.
You can use Google trends for trendy topics
Record short duration videos
Long-duration videos are not preferable unless your channel has reached a certain level of reputation. Always try for short videos about 10 to 15 mins and not more. The reason being it is tough to grab the attention of viewers more than that duration. And if they view for a lesser duration, then YouTube does not rank your videos higher up in the search results.
YouTube has an algorithm by which it calculates what percentage of particular video duration is being watched by the viewers. If the percentage is less than your videos will not be circulated well, thus losing traffic. Whereas if the percentage is more, the viewer’s count increases. This boosts traffic and helps in growing your channel.
Use Vyond and StoryBlocks, for creating professional videos.
Host a Giveaway
Arrange for contests or giveaways on your YouTube Channel. A potential to attract more viewers for subscribing to the channel and gain more engagements. But remember to follow the YouTube policies and regulations before hosting giveaways. As pre-requisites ask your viewers to watch your video, like, leave a comment and subscribe to your channel. As giveaways, give gifts that are related to the brands you are promoting.
The objective must be to create a strong potential customer base, who would continue to watch your videos and purchase future items from your brand. But do not host multiple contests. Host one contest and check whether your engagement rate is the same as before, decreased or increased. Check also the drop rate of the subscribers. Depending on the progress, arrange for the next contest or giveaway.
Create a series
Creating a series is also another good option to attract customers. It can be a comedy series, cooking series, or travel series. Ensure to mention the summary of the next episode, at the end of each current episode in the series. Mention an event, incident, or a question related to the next episode so that the viewers are prompted to view the next video of the series.
The best part is you don’t have to continually rack your brains for new content ideas. Your audience will also frequently visit your channel to catch up with the episodes of the series. It’s one of the good ways to get more traffic, views, and engagement into your YouTube channel.
Never miss on the End Screen
YouTube has a provision to help creators in framing an end screen of the video. You must not miss out on availing of the opportunity. It is always good to have an end screen. You can follow the various formats provided by YouTube.
Mention the link to the related video to watch, the playlists, and the message of requesting your viewers to like, comment and subscribe to your channel are some of the aspects that you must mention at the end screen.
You can either mention your preference of the next video to watch or allow YouTube to select the best one. Even options for the format of the end screen display are provided by YouTube. You can select the preferred option as per your interest.
Promote your YouTube Video on the social media platforms
On the question of, “How to start and grow your YouTube channel?” – The YouTube videos must be promoted on the various social media platforms. Create a short snippet of the video for say 1 to 2 minutes and then go for the promotions. Provide the link to the YouTube video on the platforms for further details ad viewing. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are some of the prominent platforms to promote your videos. If you are creating any video related to academic content or professional content, you can promote it on LinkedIn.
Embed your YouTube Video
If you have a website or you are a content writer on any other website, try to embed your YouTube video into some of your blog posts and articles. This will help to gain more traction and traffic through backlinks. You need to discover new opportunities to boost up views in your channel, the incentive to grow your channel.
Final Thoughts…
YouTube is one of the best and popular social media channels for increasing your potential customer base and target a high percentage of the audience. So, work on the tips as suggested in the above sub-sections to start and improve your channel. You are sure to gain more traffic, views, engagements, and at the end of the day more and more customers for your business,
