“They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but what about videos; I’d say they are worth a trillion words.”
You cannot deny it anymore; videos are now everywhere and video marketing is on the rise. It has grown even more prominently than just a few years ago and is convenient for brands to reach their customers.
You can argue that popular social media sites like Facebook, SnapChat, Instagram, Twitter, and others are good places to promote your content, but the truth is YouTube reigns supreme. People spend trillions of hours every day looking at videos.
I’m going to share with you 30+ proven tactics, tips, tricks, and hacks that are going to help you grow your YouTube channel.
Know Your Audience
One of the first things to do before you go about making your videos is to know what your audience, viewers, or customers want. You should be asking yourself questions.
Asking questions will help you to understand and make better videos for your audience, customers, consumers, or viewers.
Keywords & Research
Now that you’ve had a chance to know their requirements, you can start with subject / content research and gather keywords. When YouTube is concerned, keyword research is important. I cannot stress this enough.
Choosing the CORRECT keywords skyrockets your videos to the top. Choosing the WRONG keywords buries in heaps of search results.
Engaging Titles
This is another one of the important factors that make-or-break your YouTube video’s popularity. Literally, titles are what makes or breaks your video’s engagement and performance.
You have to craft engaging titles and grab your viewer’s attention without using “clickbait” headlines. People want entertaining content, and not one that says something but delivers something else.
Trailers, Trailers, Trailers
Before you run off and make your first YouTube video, create a video introducing yourself, your brand, and what your channel is about. This is a mini trailer to show to non-subscribers and persuade them to stick about and even subscribe to your content.
Need help with make a good trailer? I make a video all about that on my YouTube channel – check it here.
Content – Quality, Reformatting, Sustainability, Trending
Rule #1 – Quality, Quality, Quality; Content, Content, Content
Rule #2 – Read Rule #1 Period.
You know your audience, done your research, and have gotten that optimized video title, but now what? Now, you start to form the content of your videos.
If your video is not what people want, they’ll be lost in the infinite sea of other videos that nobody wants to see.
You have to create content that lures viewers, meaning videos on trending content. You can also repurpose an old article or blog post and create an engaging video your viewers will love.
Make Eye Catching Thumbnails
YouTube grabs a screenshot of your videos and uses these as thumbnails. Most times the image is blurry or you do not want this. Use specific fonts and styles so that it’s consistent with your brand’s look and feel. Use tools like Canva to create thumbnails.
Also, don’t make thumbnail to clickbait. You’ll lose subscribers in an instant. Thumbnails give a good first impression to your viewers of you and your channel, so make it eye-catching.
Put Yourself On Camera
Are you running your YouTube channel yourself or as a small business or start-up, then it’s better to put yourself in front of the camera. Putting a face to the brand lets your viewers easily associate with you.
This is particularly true for solo entrepreneurs; business, fitness, or life coaches; and bloggers. Also, use your photo instead of your logo on your YouTube channel if you are one of the above.
Win The Click
If your video is based on a project, show the final result at the start. A stunning result makes people more interested to see how you achieved it. This is a winner for makeover, beauty, home improvement, and DIY videos.
Telling stories is another fabulous way to tempt your viewers’ emotions. We all want to hear stories.
Viewers want to know what happens at the end of a story, so start with one.
Also, a personal story will endear you to your viewers.
Upload Videos Consistently
Just making videos with great content and then not doing it anymore is not enough. You have to be sustainable, meaning you have to do it regularly.
Doing it once is GOOD, doing it again is GREAT, but doing it again and again is FANTASTIC for you (brand or otherwise) and your viewers.
Stay Focused
AVOID nonsense and ramblings, don’t take long pauses, jump around topics, or be boring. This makes your viewers look at the recommended video section for interesting stuff. Make sure your videos are engaging visually or use stories.
Do not give your audience a chance to click away.
Engage Your Audience
Make sure the content you make is what your viewer wants. Ask your viewers for suggestions. You need to engage your subscribers and reply to their queries and comments on your videos.
Don’t forget to reply to negative comments also. It shows you are listening and active. You can use this to convert your audience into possible leads.
Brand Yourself and Your Channel
Don’t make your video look fake as this affects your viewers’ perception of your channel and you. Also, make sure your channel is visually appealing. You have to make it look authoritative. Branding a channel helps users to recognize it in a sea of content.
Be sure to match your channel to your website or blog’s look and feel; do not differentiate between them.
Cross Promote Your Videos
Cross promoting make you look more professional and uniform. You don’t know the subscribers you’ll get just by promoting on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, etc
Use the following tips to cross promote on social media:
- Make and promote teasers
- Release behind the scenes videos.
- Alert your subscribers to new video uploads
- Links in video description to nudge viewers to take a look (call-to-action)
End Screens and Info Cards
You might be thinking what is a Card? It is nothing but an interactive “panel” that slides in and out as your video is nearing the end. This is to nudge viewers with interesting content that they might like.
You’ll be able to add 5 panels, make the most of this. You can add text, images, or clickable links.
Subscribers, Subscriptions & Newsletters
Use your site’s email newsletter to grow your channel. Send embedded preview videos or links to new content and bring them back to your channel. You can always ask your audience to subscribe to your channel.
Do not ever pay for subscribers. This brings down the engagement and your authenticity is at risk in the long term.
End Screen Promotions
Use interactive graphics to link to another playlist, video, web page, or channel, or prompt them to subscribe to your channel.
You’ll be able to add them at then end 20 seconds of the videos. Plan this out, and make sure you know where they will appear.
Chase Trends
Check out your competitors and see which videos are ranking higher with better engagement. Keep checking out and refining the topics and workflow until you have a process that is well-oiled.
There isn’t any replacement for hard work. Always search for patterns like subject, editing style, or delivery system and create videos like those.
Improve Your “Watch Time”
Make your video as long as your topic requires. Nowadays, longer videos result in more watch time. This boosts your videos in YouTube’s algorithm.
Do not make videos longer just to make them longer. You will lose viewers. Generally, 7-15 minute videos perform better.
Content Mix Strategy
Always try to make videos that serve you channel’s community, perform well in search, and are shareable. You can post regular videos for your product, service, brand, or other things.
You need to mix the types of videos as well.
Along with the regular ones you can have videos that contain responding to comments, answering questions, interacting via live video as well.
Make Bingeable Videos Series
Make a video series so you can convert one time viewers into subscribers. Find specific keywords or topics and optimize your content for search.
These help you in establishing yourself as a thought leader or an influencer.
Creator and Brand Collaborations
Collaborating with another YouTuber will help you grow your channel as it helps in doubling your audience.
You will have two channel’s subscribers seeing your videos meaning more subscribers, viewers, and reach. Collaborate with guests or co-hosts that fit your niche only.
YouTube Video Optimization
Don’t only do SEO for your site, blogs, or articles. Use it to rank your videos on YouTube.
To get subscribers and growing your channel, you need SEO. YouTube results actually pop-up before other traditional blogs, articles, or websites.
Some fantastic tools for YouTube SEO are TubeBuddy and VidIQ – They help with keyword research, ranking and even your thumbnails – check out my resource page for more tools to help with SEO & Branding.
Search Engine Results Page (SERPs)
YouTube is making a killing when SEO is concerned. You shouldn’t just create videos for search engines and not people.
Do how-to’s, product reviews, and long-form (7-15+ minute) videos covering specific topics to rank higher.
Giveaways and Contests
Hosting giveaways is a one of the quickest ways to gain subscribers. Base your giveaway on your channel’s niche.
YouTube viewers love giveaways. Host giveaways or contests and encourage people to subscribe and engage with your channel.
Embed Your Videos
YouTube does not give you options to promote videos. This is why you need to have a website. Make a detailed blog or article that coincides with your channel and gives people the ability read, watch, or do both.
Embed your videos in your website or blog post and promote it to your email subscribers. Add a video widget to your blog post or website as well.
Creating, Organizing, & Promoting Your Playlists
With the increase in videos you’ll create, people will find it more difficult to navigate your channel.
This is why playlists are critical. Playlists allow you categorise and organize your channel. This allows your viewers to binge watch all videos in that category increasing watch time.
Be Interactive – Go Live!
This is a great option to boost engagement without spending much time. Live-streaming does have a learning curve. After you have learned it properly, it is the easiest way of creating video content. On YouTube, live-streaming is called YouTube Live.
It provides splendid engagement opportunities as you can communicate directly with your viewers. You can so some live streams on topics such as Q&A Sessions, Webinars, Tutorials, Product Demonstrations, etc
Should I Try Paid Adverting?
Just using organic growth is good, but you’ll have to add paid promotion at one time or the other to speed things up. Create an ad campaign and help drive subscribers and viewers to your page.
This is similar to Facebook Ads, but is tailored towards YouTube.
Deep Dive Into The Community
Other than promoting your videos to grow your channel, you need to be active in the community. This allows you to get feedback, network, and share interests with people having the same goals.
Attend events like Content Marketing World or VidCon and meet other creators like yourself and promote your videos.
Analytics, Analytics, Analytics & There’s Data Too
YouTube’s analytics and reports are crucial to your success. Your analytics are tailored to your channel and provides an opportunity for you to improve.
Do not stay away from analytic because it feels overwhelming. If you avoid it, it will not help you to understand it.
Publish to Social Media
Last, but not least is publishing to social media and promoting the hell out of it. This is no secret that video kills it with engagement and boosting performance in terms on social media.
Regularly promote your channel and videos to your followers and encourage them to become subscribers.
As soon as you upload your video, let your followers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn know. Create previews or snippets for each social media platform and link it to an accompanying blog post or article on your website.
Conclusion
Driving participation using quality content is what makes up for engaged followers who advocate your brand to others. Always be true to yourself and your brand, and be in constant communication with your viewers.
Develop quality content, make thumbnails to grab viewer’s attention, deliver as promised, start videos using a strong hook, and keep things interesting. Overall, you’re creating an experience to keep your viewers’ engaged.
Did you like my post on “How to grow a YouTube channel?” Did you try any of these in your videos? What results did you get?
Top 5 Tools To Get You Started on YouTube
Very quickly before you go here are 5 amazing tools I have used every day to grow my YouTube channel from 0 to 30K subscribers in the last 12 months that I could not live without.
1. VidIQ helps boost my views and get found in search
I almost exclusively switched to VidIQ from a rival in 2020.
Within 12 months I tripled the size of my channel and very quickly learnt the power of thumbnails, click through rate and proper search optimization. Best of all, they are FREE!
2. Adobe Creative Suite helps me craft amazing looking thumbnails and eye-catching videos
I have been making youtube videos on and off since 2013.
When I first started I threw things together in Window Movie Maker, cringed at how it looked but thought “that’s the best I can do so it’ll have to do”.
Big mistake!
I soon realized the move time you put into your editing and the more engaging your thumbnails are the more views you will get and the more people will trust you enough to subscribe.
That is why I took the plunge and invested in my editing and design process with Adobe Creative Suite. They offer a WIDE range of tools to help make amazing videos, simple to use tools for overlays, graphics, one click tools to fix your audio and the very powerful Photoshop graphics program to make eye-catching thumbnails.
Best of all you can get a free trial for 30 days on their website, a discount if you are a student and if you are a regular human being it starts from as little as £9 per month if you want to commit to a plan.
3. Rev.com helps people read my videos
You can’t always listen to a video.
Maybe you’re on a bus, a train or sat in a living room with a 5 year old singing baby shark on loop… for HOURS. Or, you are trying to make as little noise as possible while your new born is FINALLY sleeping.
This is where Rev can help you or your audience consume your content on the go, in silence or in a language not native to the video.
Rev.com can help you translate your videos, transcribe your videos, add subtitles and even convert those subtitles into other languages – all from just $1.50 per minute.
A GREAT way to find an audience and keep them hooked no matter where they are watching your content.
4. PlaceIT can help you STAND OUT on YouTube
I SUCK at making anything flashy or arty.
I have every intention in the world to make something that looks cool but im about as artistic as a dropped ice-cream cone on the web windy day.
That is why I could not live on YouTube without someone like PlaceIT. They offer custom YouTube Banners, Avatars, YouTube Video Intros and YouTube End Screen Templates that are easy to edit with simple click, upload wizard to help you make amazing professional graphics in minutes.
Best of all, some of their templates are FREE! or you can pay a small fee if you want to go for their slightly more premium designs (pst – I always used the free ones).
5. StoryBlocks helps me add amazing video b-roll cutaways
I mainly make tutorials and talking head videos.
And in this modern world this can be a little boring if you don’t see something funky every once in a while.
I try with overlays, jump cuts and being funny but my secret weapon is b-roll overlay content.
I can talk about skydiving, food, money, kids, cats – ANYTHING I WANT – with a quick search on the StoryBlocks website I can find a great looking clip to overlay on my videos, keeping them entertained and watching for longer.
They have a wide library of videos, graphics, images and even a video maker tool and it wont break the bank with plans starting from as little as £8.25 ($9) per month.
