YouTube is a goldmine of entertainment where most of us spend our free time. Not only is it a great source of entertainment, but also a wonderful resource for learning something new or acquiring a new skill. According to Global Media Insight, around 2.7 billion people actively visit YouTube monthly, which makes it one of the most attractive avenues for earning money.
If you regularly visit YouTube, chances are that you’ve thought about creating a YouTube channel at least once, and you’re not alone. Around 3.7 million videos are uploraded on YouTube every day, which also means that you’ll face a lot of competition to rank your videos stand out and attract more viewers. Backlinko published an interesting article on how to grow a YouTube channel where they share useful insights into what works and doesn’t. We’ve brought you the most important takeaways from that case study so you don’t have to spend too much time looking for ways to grow your channel.
Before we get started, we’d like to emphasize the importance of having a good internet connection, which allows you to upload videos quickly and monitor your channel stats in real-time. You can’t do any of this if your internet is slow or inconsistent. Consider switching to Cox Internet because of its high speeds and reliable fiber-optic network. Moreover, you can change your plan speed later at no additional cost. Contact Cox customer service to learn more about pricing and availability. With that sorted, let’s get back to how you can grow your YouTube channel quickly. Read on to know more.
Find low-competition video keywords
After you’ve created your new channel, it’s time to upload videos. You’re free to choose any topic you like, but you have to do thorough keyword research if you want more people to watch your content. This way, your videos are more likely to be seen by people looking up those keywords.
To do this, you can either use a third-party tool or use the YouTube search bar to get suggestions for new content. When you enter a keyword, YouTube suggests similar results containing those keywords, which you can use to create new videos.
Create watch-time-optimized videos
Just like any business, YouTube runs on ad revenue. The more people watch content on YouTube, the more money YouTube makes and so do the content creators. So you have to keep people engaged and keep them watching your content if you want to grow your viewership. This is why “watch time” is one of the most important factors to watch out for.
Another thing to keep in mind is that your videos should be longer. Just to be clear, longer doesn’t mean you should go on and on about something just to increase the watch time. Make sure you’re providing enough value that the viewer would want to stick around. Try covering the main topic and a few adjacent secondary topics so viewers can get a holistic overview of the entire topic.
Use catchy thumbnails
According to YouTube, around 90% of the better-performing videos have custom thumbnails. This is because you’re the creator of that video and nobody, including the YouTube algorithm, knows better than you. So why let the algorithm come up with the thumbnail when you can just as easily create a catchy one yourself? The thumbnail is one of the first things people notice and it can be a deal breaker if it’s not something that entices people to click on it.
Optimize your YouTube videos
If you didn’t know already, YouTube SEO is a thing, and a pretty important one at that. Up until a few years ago, people would just include their main keyword into the title and that was all the SEO they needed, but that’s no longer the case. Yes, inserting your keyword in the title is still considered a good practice but you need to do a bit more to rank your videos higher.
Pay attention to the choice of words for the title, and ideally, you should choose the titles that are aimed at maximizing the click-through rate (CTR). Simply put, YouTube is more likely to recommend your video to more people if your video has a higher number of clicks. But don’t resort to clickbait as it can damage your reputation. Lastly, be sure to optimize your video tags according to the topic of your video and include some variations of the keywords as well so you can cover more ground.
Promote your videos
Did you know that YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world? Its mechanism works similarly to Google where you have to give your blog posts a little push to boost the visibility. One of the easier ways to do this is to make short clippings out of your videos and share them as reels on YouTube and other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
Convert more viewers into subscribers
The number of subscribers is also important besides views. Admittedly, not everyone will make it to the end of your video. But those who do are more likely to subscribe to your channel. So make sure to include a subscribe button on the screen at the end of each video and verbally request the viewers to subscribe to your channel.
Conclusion
This concludes some of the most important tips you can follow to fine-tune your channel and expand your viewership. Remember that growing your channel can get challenging, especially at the start, but it gets easier once you get the hang of things. To summarize, do thorough keyword research, make catchy thumbnails, include proper tags and keywords, and make interesting and useful videos that add some value. Best of luck.